Solomon dolphin export permit was granted illegally, documents show

The Solomon Star 15 Sep 11;

DOCUMENTS confirmed the export permit granted to local dolphin exporter and owner of Furaiala Community Cetacean project by the Government was done illegally.

According to documents obtained by The Solomon Star, local exporter Dr Badley Anita has not met some of the dolphin license conditions required by the Ministry of Fisheries.

Documents showed the local exporter:

has an expired collection of Malaita fisheries business license that needed to be revalidated
has an expired collection of Guadalcanal fisheries business license (RN 79133) that expired in March 31 20011 and;
has an expired collection of Central Islands fisheries business license (CR 30085) that needs to be revalidated.

However,The Solomon Star understands the Fisheries Ministry and the Environment Ministry has approved the local exporter’s export permit.

This was despite him catching dolphins in those provincial waters illegally, documents showed.

In a letter signed by the director of the Fisheries Ministry James Teri on behalf of the Permanent Secretary, the license (No: FPL-22/2011) was to cater for purchasing, holding, processing and export of live dolphins.

The license was granted on September 9, 2011 valid commencing January 1 2011 to December 31 2011.

Sources within the ministry who provided the documents to The Solomon Star said the export permit was granted although the local exporter has invalid business license to capture dolphins in Malaita, Guadalcanal and Central provinces.

“The exporter has invalid licenses to capture dolphins with some need to be revalidated but why does the ministry decide to grant them an export permit,” the source said.

Documents also showed that the Ministry of Environment and Conservation issued an export permit to the exporter in October 9, 2009.

The permit was valid until April 6, 2010.

The permit was revalidated to October 4, 2010 to April 4, 2011 and then renewed again to October 6, 2011 which is next month.

The ministry earlier explained that the export permit was renewed because the exporter had not exported any dolphins during the past years.

Therefore, his permit was still valid because he had not used up his quota of 50 live dolphins in any of those years.

Fisheries Ministry director James Teri was not available for comments yesterday.

The paper also attempted to talk to the ministry’s Permanent Secretary but he was also unavailable.

Meanwhile, despite warnings from local and international conservation groups to block the proposed export, the Government has stood by their decision to allow the export.

The Government also passed a new policy last week to ban all dolphin export by January 2012.

By DOUGLAS MARAU