With a gift in your Will, you can help us continue our work on the following programmes:
- End captivity: Whales and dolphins have a right to live free and healthy lives. Our goal is to reduce the numbers held in captivity and develop sanctuaries, or release programmes, for those held.
- Prevent deaths in nets: Hundreds of thousands of whales and dolphins are accidentally caught and killed by commercial fishing fleets every year. Our goal is to reduce the number of whale and dolphins killed and injured through entanglement in fishing gear.
- Stop whaling: Commercial whaling is illegal. And yet, every year, Japan, Norway and Iceland kill around 1,500 whales. Our goal is to reduce the numbers killed and the numbers of countries whaling.
- Create healthy seas: Commercial fishing, oil and gas drilling, and shipping are threatening the lives of whales and dolphins. Our goal is to protect the places where whales and dolphins live.
Over the past 30 years, we have been providing a voice for whales and dolphins and campaigning on their behalf. Thanks to our supporters, including gifts in Wills, we have had a number of successes:
- End captivity: In partnership with SEA LIFE TRUST, we have created the world's first open water sanctuary for beluga whales in Iceland. We worked with local campaigners to persuade the Indian government to ban whale and dolphin captivity, campaigning brought about the Virgin Pledge making sure its partners who run aquariums no longer take whales and dolphins from the wild, and stopped captured beluga whales being imported into the United States of America.
- Prevent deaths in nets: As a result of our campaigning, the UK Fisheries Minister. committed to the UK being a world leader in tackling the problem of whales and dolphins becoming caught in fishing gear, we helped reduce the number of vertical lines along the east coast of America reducing the risk of entanglement to large whales, and we were part of a team which helped to significantly reduce harbour porpoise bycatch in gillnets in the US.
- Stop whaling: We, along with our supporters, were able to persuade the EU Parliament to vote in favour of stopping whale meat being moved through EU ports, we completed a review of Danish regulations on whale meat imports into Denmark which resulted in changes to law, and we exposed and stopped the illegal online whale meat sales in Japan.
- Create healthy seas: We, along with other NGOs, successfully campaigned to create the world’s largest marine protected area in the Ross Sea, covering 1.55 million square kilometres, we supported the creation of the first marine protected area in the seas off Bangladesh, campaigned for a law that limits the speed of ships along the east coast of the United States reducing the threat of harmful or lethal collisions with North Atlantic right whales.