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1998 The Seattle Times
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The Makah Indian Tribe was granted permission today to hunt gray
whales, meaning that next spring the small tribe on Washington's
northwestern-most tip could load into canoes with harpoons and a giant
rifle to kill a whale for the first time in 70 years.
Approval came in Monaco at the annual meeting of the International
Whaling Commission, a panel of 39 nations that have signed a whaling
treaty.
"We are just ecstatic," said John Ahrens, a lawyer with the tribe and
part of the 15-member Makah delegation in Monaco. "We have taken a lot of
abuse, people saying we don't really need to hunt whales, that it's not
that important anymore. That's hard to hear when you consider it central
to who you are."
The commission, established to monitor world whale populations and
regulate the small whaling industry, agreed to a deal by the United States
and Russia to allow 124 gray whales a year to be killed by native groups
in the North Pacific. The understanding was that the Makah tribe would be
allotted four per year.
In recent years, Russian natives have been allowed to kill up to 140
gray whales per year, so the new quota will mean an increase in the number
of groups whaling but a decrease in the number of whales killed.
The decision angered environmentalists, who say the result is a clear
expansion of whaling. A new group has been given permission to start
preying on a whale fresh off the endangered species list, they say, and
it's an enormous symbolic defeat that the whalers are located in the
United States, long a world leader in whale conservation.
"We never imagined the Clinton-Gore administration would be the one
to resume whaling in the lower 48 states," said Will Anderson of the
Seattle chapter of the Progressive Animal Welfare Society. Anderson also
is in Monaco.
Inupiat Eskimos hunt whales off the north coast of Alaska, but they
are the only sanctioned whalers in the U.S.
Approval from the international body is the last formal step needed
for the tribe to begin hunting whales in 1998, said Scott Smullen, a
spokesman with the National Marine Fisheries Service, the agency that will
oversee the hunt along with the tribe.
The U.S. government already has ruled that the Makah hunt will not
harm the gray-whale population.
Lawsuits are expected challenging the hunt. Last week, a group of
animal-rights groups and Congressman Jack Metcalf, R-Whidbey Island, filed
a suit charging the U.S. had overlooked key environmental laws when ruling
last month that the whale hunt could proceed.
The gray whale was removed from the endangered species list in 1994.
There are now an estimated 22,000 in the Pacific Ocean. At this time of
year, the whales are swimming south along the west coast to Mexico, where
they breed. In March, April and May, they will make the return trip north.
The Makah tribe will be permitted to hunt in either spring or fall,
as the whales pass near Cape Flattery in the Olympic Coast National Marine
Sanctuary. They are not allowed to kill calves or any whale accompanied by
a calf, and they are not allowed to sell whale meat, according to
agreements between the tribe and the U.S. government.
Makah whalers, who acknowledge they don't really know how to go about
killing a whale, plan to chase the 25-ton mammals in wooden canoes backed
by a support crew in a powerboat.
The whale will be struck first with a hand-thrown harpoon affixed to
a rope to tether the whale to the canoe. A marksman then will attempt to
kill the whale swiftly using a .50-caliber rifle made by a veterinarian
who specializes in the humane killing of huge animals.
At the meeting in Monaco, delegates from many nations expressed doubt
as to whether the Makah really needed whale meat for food. Typically, the
whaling commission only grants aboriginal groups permission to kill whales
if the natives are both culturally and nutritionally reliant on whaling.
Several members of the Makah tribe who oppose the hunt also journeyed
to Monaco at the expense of animal-rights groups to tell delegates that
people on the reservation are not eating the meat from a whale they
butchered two years ago after it got tangled in a fishing net.
Many of the Russian natives who hunt gray whales for food are
impoverished and have no other means of getting food, particularly the
Chukotka Inuit people of Siberia.
But Makah tribal members have argued all along that the whale hunt is
most important as a way to resurrect a sense of community and provide hope
on the isolated reservation.
Danny Westneat's phone-message number is 202-662-7455. His e-mail address
is: dwes-new@seatimes.com