WDC joins the call to GLACIER delegates: No whale products through the Arctic!

WDC has joined a coalition of NGOs to launch a two-week advertising campaign to coincide with this week’s Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience (GLACIER) in Anchorage, Alaska.  Sponsored by the US State Department, GLACIER will highlight key US and international priorities in the Arctic and brings together scientists, policy makers and other stakeholders from the region.

Iceland’s President, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, has called for the Arctic to become the “Suez Canal of the north”, a move which risks creating a new ‘super highway’ for the whalers to exploit, as well as damaging already fragile Arctic ecosystems.

Given the recent transit of Icelandic fin whale meat to Japan via Arctic waters, we are calling on GLACIER delegates and President Obama, who is attending, to ensure that an increasingly ice-free Arctic will not become a thoroughfare for commercial trade in whale products.