Australia condemns Japan’s decision to hunt endangered species: ‘End this practice’

Japan’s decision to hunt a species of whale that is facing extinction has been condemned by Australia. Fin whales were officially added to the country’s commercial harvesting list on Wednesday, with the decision published in a government gazette.

A statement released by Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s office on Thursday said Australia was “disappointed by Japan’s decision to expand its commercial whaling program.”

“Fin whales are the second largest of all whales and are considered vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature,” it continued.

There has been plummeting interest in consuming whale meat in Japan. It dropped from a peak of 230,000 tons in 1962 to just 2,000 tons in recent years. Today the meat is generally only eaten by older generations and the odd tourist wanting to try it as an oddity or delicacy.

Related: Surprising theory emerges as Japan considers butchering massive new whale species

Trying to counter the decline, the country is working to expand commercial harvesting. In 2023, it began stocking whale meat inside vending machines around Tokyo to create interest among younger Japanese.

Australia ‘opposed to all commercial whaling’

Successive Australian governments have appeared reluctant to directly criticize Japan’s whaling since it drawn from international waters, to focus instead on hunting within its own territory five years ago. Although at the time, the federal government said the move was “regrettable.”

On Thursday, Plibersek’s office confirmed it is “opposed to all commercial whaling” and it urged “all countries to end this practice.” The Japanese have previously countered condemnation of their whale and dolphin hunting by noting that Australia’s kangaroo and wallaby harvest constitutes the largest land-based slaughter of wildlife in the world.

Minister Plibersek has been contacted for further comment.

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Local television in Japan excitedly reported on the new 9,300-tonne Kangei Maru ship which has been designed to haul in fin whales — the world’s second-largest whale species.

But it has worked to block international efforts to counter its activities by anti-whaling groups including Neptune’s Pirates and the Captain Paul Watson Foundation.

Their founder, anti-whaling activist Paul Watson, was planning to take on the Japanese whale harvesters at sea. But he was taken into custody on a “secret” international arrest warrant issued by Japan in July.

The arrest occurred after his ship docked in Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory. Watson is perhaps the world’s best known anti-whaling activist, and he was the founder of Sea Shepherd, and co-founder of Greenpeace.

Denmark is a supporter of dolphin and whale hunting and it controversially allows its self-government archipelago the Faroe Islands to hunt hundreds every year.

On Thursday, Australian conservationist Bob Brown appealed to Tasmanian-born Queen Mary of Denmark to intervene on Watson’s behalf. He warned the arrest “will shame Copenhagen in the eyes of the world”.

“I am well aware of the constitutional restraints on the monarchy in Denmark but there is enormous respect for Her Majesty Queen Mary here in her native Tasmania and, at the same time, enormous support for Watson who was pivotal to getting the illegal Japanese whale- killers out of our oceans,” he said.

“The campaign to free Watson from his Danish-Japanese captors will be full-on, global and relentless.”

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