Solomon Star 5 May 09;
THE Earth Island Institute based in the United States said it would campaign hard to ban any dolphin exports from this country.
Mark Berman of Earth Island was responding to the new rules that Solomon Islands be allowed to export only 10 dolphins a year.
Mr Berman said this quota of 10 dolphins include any that die in the process of capture.
“So if 10 are captured and 5 survived that is the quota for the year,” he said.
Mr Berman said the Solomon Island government has been totally irresponsible on this issue of allowing 100 dolphins per year.
“This shows the Minister of Fisheries Nollen Leni and his science advisers are driven by politics and the promise of dollars,” Mr Berman said.
“The science provided at the farce of a dolphin forum in late March was only mad science and proven wrong at CITES.
“Now that the quota is only 10, the value of the trade as you can see is diminished.
“Our goal now is to get this total to ZERO and end this insidious trade once and for all.
“The Solomon Islands government is becoming a pariah when it comes to protecting its natural resources including dolphins,” he said.
The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) said the Solomon Islands controversial trade in wild-caught dolphins is to be subject to an in-depth review under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), as decided by the CITES Animals Committee at its annual meeting recently in Geneva.
Evidence from leading cetacean experts in the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's Cetacean Specialist Group (CSG) reveals a lack of population data for bottlenose dolphins in the Solomon Islands.
This led the specialists to conclude that it is impossible to determine that the export of bottlenose dolphins is not detrimental to the wild population - a CITES requirement.
The CSG's evidence was critical to the decision to place this dolphin trade into the CITES significant trade review process, a mechanism to ensure compliance with Convention.
"This should be a wake-up call to the Solomon Islands' government that the sustainability of its controversial trade in wild-caught dolphins will now be under CITES scrutiny," says D.J. Schubert, Wildlife Biologist of the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI), who attended the CITES meeting.
"The government is obligated to comply with the rules of CITES - rules that it has, to date, ignored. AWI demands the government to suspend future live captures and exports of bottlenose dolphins, pending completion of the review process."
The Animals Committee also recommended that the Solomon Islands' government set a more cautious dolphin export quota.
By MOFFAT MAMU
