08/01/08 18:35:45 0CdHpBeK0
はーい海外サイトに英語スクリプト張りたい人正論ですどうぞー
Many countries support sustainable use of resources, but somehow they exempt whales from this principle, because they think whales are a special animal.
But there are many special animals - the cow in India, for example - and if each nation tries to impose its own special animal on other countries, you can see the problem.
Sometimes issues of science and principle might be more important than simple issues of emotion
Whales should be treated just like any other resource, he said, but this does not mean that Japan would act irresponsibly.
We are not saying that we want to utilise endangered or depleted species.
People say they want to preserve whales for future generations and we agree. We want to preserve whales as a resource, so we have a mutual goal.
And Japan's research programme is about fulfilling this goal, he said.
The reason for the moratorium on commercial whaling was scientific uncertainty about the number of whales. It was a moratorium for the sake of collecting data and that is why we started scientific whaling. We were asked to collect more data.