Japan will inform the IWC of its decision by the end of the year, Kyodo news agency said, months after the body rejected its latest bid to resume commercial whaling. A fisheries agency official denied the report, however, insisting no decision had been taken on whether to withdraw from the IWC, which banned commercial whaling in 1986. Australia urges Japan to remain in IWC after its bid to lift whaling ban rejected Read more“Japan’s official position, that we want to resume commercial whaling as soon as possible, has not changed,” the official told the Guardian. Conservation campaigners welcomed the possible end to whaling in the Southern Ocean but warned that by withdrawing from the IWC, Japan risked becoming a “pirate whaling nation”. Japan would join Iceland and Norway in openly defying the ban on commercial whale hunting.

Source: The Guardian December 20, 2018 03:22 UTC