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When Greenpeace launched its anti-whaling campaign in 1975, we were responding to the crisis facing the world's great whale populations: most whales had been depleted by a whaling industry that resisted all constraints on its activities and some were on the brink of extinction. Through high-profile direct actions at sea, public outreach and political lobbying, Greenpeace was instrumental in helping secure the International Whaling Commission's (IWC) moratorium on commercial whaling, which took effect in 1986. At the time, we expected the whaling industry to quietly dissipate. And it nearly did.

Of the nine countries whaling when the moratorium took effect, seven ended their activities by 1990. Yet Japan and Norway continued to whale commercially. Today, these countries are pushing to lift the ban on whaling, an act that will have an enormous impact on the world's remaining whales.

Greenpeace is in the midst of an intense international effort to communicate a simple but urgent message: the time has come to protect whales permanently and end commercial whaling, once and for all.

We are leading the global struggle on many fronts:

• Through taking direct action against the whalers on the high seas and bearing witness and communicating the truth about whaling back to the world;
• Through public education in countries around the world, including Japan and Norway;
• Through political lobbying in countries that have influence at the IWC and the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES); and
• Through participation in annual meetings of the IWC and CITES. Greenpeace intends to continue this effort until the world's whale populations are protected, permanently, from commercial whaling.

Information compliments of Greenpeace

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