1868 Svend Foyn initiated “modern whaling” in the Varanger fjord of Finnmark in northeastern Norway.
1904 whaling commenced in South Georgia, opening up the Southern ocean around the antarctic Continent.
1909 the first hydrogenation factory was built (based on technology developed in 1903), spurring the demand for whale oil.
1925 the era of “pelagic whaling” began in antarctica’s ross Sea.
1929 the Norwegian whaling act (the 1929 Norwegian act) was passed by Nor-way’s parliament. It was the first attempt to establish international rules for pe-lagic whaling.
1931 the Convention for the regulation of whaling (the 1931 Geneva Convention) was signed in Geneva on September 24. It was first attempt to regulate the killing of baleen whales. a record number of whales were killed in 1931, mostly in the antarctic.
1937 the International agreement for the regulation of whaling (the 1937 London Convention) was signed in London on June 8.
1938 the Protocol amending the International agreement of June 8, 1937 for the regulation of whaling (the 1938 London Protocol) was signed in London on June 24.
1944 the Protocol amending in Certain Particulars the International agreement of June 8, 1937 for the regulation of whaling (as amended by the Protocol of June 24, 1938) was signed in London on February 7. Because Ireland did not ratify, this protocol never came into force.
1945 the Supplementary Protocol Concerning whaling was signed in London on october 5. It made the provisions of the 1944 protocol applicable to the 1945–46 season for those countries that signed, thus circumventing Ireland’s failure to ratify the agreement.
1945 the Protocol amending the agreement of June 8, 1937 for the regulation of whaling (as amended by the Protocol of June 24, 1938) was signed in London on November 26. It applied only to the 1946–47 season but was renewed in modified form for the 1947–48 season.
1946 the International Convention for the regulation of whaling (the 1946 washing-ton Convention) was signed in washingwashing-ton, DC, on December 2. It established the International whaling Commission (IwC) and set up a permanent regime for regulating whale hunting.
1972 the United Nations Conference on the human environment, meeting in Stock-holm, called for a ten-year moratorium on whaling.
1973 the Convention on International trade in endangered Species (CIteS) was signed in washington, D.C. Most whale species would later receive CIteS protection.
1982 the IwC accepted a ten-year moratorium on whaling, though not all whaling nations agreed to adhere to the decision. as of 2009, this moratorium was still in effect.
“Conservation,” aldo leopold once quipped, “is a bird that flies faster than the shot we aim at it.”1 Mobility was once one of the main advantages that animals had over the humans who hunted them for food and profit, and few animals were faster and more elusive than those that undertook long migrations each year. snares, traps, arrows, harpoons, stampedes, mus-kets, and the like certainly took their toll, but the vast majority of species were nimble enough to survive and reproduce, despite some glaring cases of extinction over the centuries. For the past 150 years, however, animals have found themselves staring down the barrel of the modern scientific-industrial revolution. High-powered rifles can strike even the fastest afri-can mammals, just as double-barreled shotguns afri-can devastate entire bird flocks and grenade-tipped harpoons can wipe out entire whale herds. land usurpation for urban and agricultural development has often proved even more deadly than the weaponry, especially for migratory species, which depend on multiple habitats at various locations during different seasons of the year for their survival. nothing seems to offer wildlife protection any
longer—not the dense forests and vast savannas of africa, not the wide-open prairies and remote regions of north america, not even the treacher-ous and frigid polar waters of antarctica.
during the first half of the twentieth century, animal conservation was all but synonymous with game cropping, multilateral hunting regulations, and nature parks. diplomatic negotiations were largely in the hands of the major industrial and colonial powers, which responded in ad hoc ways to the problems that arose inside and outside their jurisdiction, be they the overharvesting of ivory, horn, and skins (in africa); the wanton destruc-tiveness of the meatpacking and millinery industries (in north america);
or the exterminationist impulses of the whaling business (in antarctica).
treaties emerged in piecemeal fashion after one or more governments real-ized that national regulations did not suffice, and the agreements tended to remain regional in scope, even if many conservationists dreamed of ex-panding their geographic domains at some point in the future.
things began to change after World War ii, when the United nations and other international organizations assumed the task of nature protec-tion worldwide. the new treaties have tended to be global in scope and to codify general rules of conduct for all countries to follow regardless of their geographic circumstances and economic positions. the new treaties also have been far more likely to focus on the protection and restoration of entire ecosystems rather than on the preservation of certain game species and favorite hunting grounds. three treaties in particular acted as harbin-gers of a new approach: the 171 Convention on Wetlands of international importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat, signed in ramsar, iran (the ramsar Convention), the first treaty to focus above all on wetland restora-tion around the globe (even if the term waterfowl in its title was a throw-back to the old hunting treaties); the 173 Convention on international trade in endangered species (Cites), signed in Washington, dC, the first treaty designed to rein in the global trade in live animals and animal parts;
and the 17 Convention on the Conservation of Migratory species of Wild animals, signed in Bonn (the Bonn Convention), the first treaty devoted solely to the protection of migratory animals and their habitats worldwide.
the old approach to animal protection did not, of course, disappear overnight. the 168 african Convention largely reiterated the 133 lon-don Convention, even if it also extended a protective net to endangered native flora (an area of conservation that was almost wholly absent from the earlier discussions, since plants were nonmigratory and not a target for hunters). the United states, meanwhile, continued to favor a bilateral
approach to bird protection well into the 170s, signing separate trea-ties with Japan (172) and the soviet Union (176) that were remarkably similar to the ones signed earlier with Canada and Mexico. likewise, the iWC has remained the most important agency overseeing the world’s whale stocks, even though most whaling enterprises went belly up decades ago for lack of cetaceans to hunt. the new approach to environmental diplomacy did not emerge immediately. the first major conference de-voted solely to global environmental issues—the United nations Confer-ence on the Human environment, held in stockholm (the stockholm Conference)—did not take place until 172. and the first global environ-mental agency—the United nations environment Programme (UneP), headquartered in nairobi, Kenya—was not formally established until a year later. the new diplomacy was born somewhere between the time the last whaling treaty was signed in 16 and the establishment of UneP in 173.
that these newer treaties are, in most respects, superior to the older ones can hardly be denied. British diplomats often casually referred to the 100 london Convention as the elephant treaty, but in reality, it did vir-tually nothing to protect elephants from ivory predators. the 133 lon-don Convention also attempted to regulate the african ivory trade, but enforcement in the colonies was far too lax and corruption among colonial officials far too widespread for it to offer much in the way of genuine pro-tection. (even the much-vaunted British wardens were deeply complicit in the illicit ivory trade, as ian Parker discovered when he joined the Kenya Game department in 156).2 the novelty of Cites lay in the fact that it placed controls not only on the export of tusks and ivory from africa but also on the import of those products into other countries around the globe.
in addition, it allowed for a total trade ban if and when a species became endangered, a feature that was missing from the earlier agreements. rhinos were given comprehensive Cites protection in 176, elephants in 18—an accomplishment no earlier treaty was able to achieve.
the ramsar and Bonn conventions addressed many of the weaknesses that had hampered the 116 and 136 bird treaties of north america. the U.s. government’s bilateral arrangements were simply too limited in ter-ritorial scope to offer comprehensive protection to all of the bird species that migrated across the Western Hemisphere. in practice, the treaties of-fered more protection to game birds (especially waterfowl) than to other birds, to those that stayed within north america than to those that mi-grated to Central and south america, and to those that used the Pacific flyway than to those that flew along the atlantic coast. Both treaties, more-over, lacked effective habitat-protection clauses, and subsequent efforts to
rectify this deficiency through the creation of wildlife refuges were never able to keep pace with urban and agricultural development even within north america, let alone elsewhere. the ramsar Convention dispensed with the bilateral approach altogether in favor of a more global perspec-tive. it focused on identifying and protecting the world’s premier wetlands, with the goal of providing all species with adequate feeding and breeding sites. as of 2007, Canada had thirty-seven ramsar sites covering 150,200 square miles, Mexico had sixty-five sites covering 20,500 square miles, and the United states had twenty-one sites covering 5,020 square miles. Peru had eleven ramsar sites (26,300 square miles), Bolivia eight (25,100 square miles), Brazil eight (2,700 square miles), argentina fifteen (13,00 square miles), and Cuba six (,600 square miles).3 the Bonn Convention has had a similar impact: it requires countries to set aside sufficient space to ac-commodate the entire range of an animal’s annual movements.
Better protection for whales came in fits and starts, not least because the global commons problem on the high seas had made it difficult even for the United nations to act effectively. in the early 160s, the iWC dras-tically reduced its annual catch quota from 16,000 BWU to 2,700 BWU, a tacit acknowledgment that it had been allowing overharvesting for the previous decade and a half. then, in 172, the overwhelming majority of delegates to the stockholm Conference voted in favor of a complete mora-torium on whale hunting for a ten-year period in order to allow the stocks to recover (a recommendation that the iWC temporarily chose to ignore).
shortly thereafter, Greenpeace—an international environmental organiza-tion founded in 171 to halt nuclear testing—began a high-profile cam-paign against the whaling industry that included film footage of whalers flagrantly violating the terms of the 16 Washington Convention. at the same time, many nonwhaling nations began to join the iWC (as permit-ted by article X of the 16 treaty) for the sole purpose of putting a com-plete stop to commercial whaling. they accomplished this mission in 182, when more than three-fourths of the iWC membership voted to amend the schedule to read: “Catch limits for the killing for commercial purposes of whales from all stocks for the 186 coastal and the 185–86 pelagic sea-sons and thereafter shall be zero.”4 By 186, Cites protection had been ex-tended to many cetacean species, further ensuring the prospect of a long-term ban on the hunting of the great whales, regardless of what the iWC might decide in the future.
a century ago, governments would have found it politically impossi-ble to impose a total trade ban on elephant ivory and whale oil, so strong was the faith in free enterprise, free trade, and the “free goods” of nature.
But profit-oriented enterprises overharvested these products to such an extent that it is now all but impossible to find diplomats and conserva-tionists willing to sanction even a modicum of trade. african govern-ments with large and stable elephant herds, for instance, have failed in their repeated efforts to revive the ivory trade, even though it makes sense both economically and ecologically to harvest tusks on a sustainable basis. thus far, Cites members have refused to lift the ivory ban out of fear that it would just reinvigorate the illicit trade in tusks (though in 2002, they did allow south africa, Botswana, and namibia to sell sixty tons of ivory from elephants that had died of natural causes). similarly, Japan, norway, and the soviet Union (russia) officially objected to the iWC’s zero quota; under the terms of the 16 Washington Convention, these objections allow them to ignore the restrictions. the glare of world opinion, however, has so far kept them from resuming full-scale whaling, even though minkes (the smallest of the great whales) are still plentiful in the ocean and several other species have begun to make a rebound. as with ivory, the iWC and Cites members have refused to lift the whaling restriction, largely for fear that doing so would just encourage pirate enterprises. the earlier treaties failed so miserably in their efforts to rein in the elephant-ivory and whale-oil trade that few statespeople are will-ing to risk a new attempt at game croppwill-ing.
to dwell on the weaknesses of the older treaties, however, is to risk los-ing sight of their many positive features. africa’s national parks and nature reserves are, in many ways, the envy of the world today: they are larger, more conservation-oriented, and more profitable than many of the parks and reserves that were later established in asia and latin america, where multilateral agreements were largely lacking. ivory poaching continues to be a problem, both inside and outside africa’s parks, but here too there is a silver lining: there is no longer much demand for tusks in europe and the United states, the two regions that once dominated the world’s ivory trade.
similarly, north american governments monitor and protect their bird populations better than most other nations of the world, while sustaining the harvesting of millions of game birds each year by recreational hunters.
even the selection of ramsar sites in north america was facilitated by the fact that many of the prime wetland locations were already under national protection as wildlife and bird refuges. the whaling agreements were far less successful in offering protection to cetaceans, but it is nonethe-less worth remembering that they granted protection to the great whales once they became endangered and that all of them survived—no small feat given the rapacious behavior of whaling enterprises (and the continued
behavior of Japanese whalers, who invoke the scientific-research clause of the 16 Washington Convention to justify their annual expeditions).
For all their weaknesses, the treaties discussed in this book helped codify the “rules of the game” that offered many species a sporting chance of survival against the techno-onslaught of the modern era. these trea-ties marked the beginning point, not the end point, of a long-term diplo-matic effort to address the enormous threat that the unrestrained pursuit of profit and the development of ever more efficient killing technologies have posed to the survival of the world’s migratory species. although they did not always provide sustainable long-range solutions, they did at least postpone the day of reckoning long enough for subsequent generations to find more permanent and effective solutions. sometimes, all that stood be-tween precarious survival and complete extermination was a flawed multi-national convention.