PORT ANGELES — A legal team from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society will be among the activists at a public meeting Wednesday who’ll oppose the Makah tribe’s campaign to resume whaling.
According to anti-whaling activists Chuck and Margaret Owen of Joyce, lawyers from Oregon and Seattle will attend the session that will start at 6:30 p.m. at the Vern Burton Community Center, 308 E. Fourth St., Port Angeles.
Public comment will be taken at the meeting on a draft environmental impact statement prepared by the National Marine Fisheries Service on the tribe’s request to resume subsistence hunting of gray whale hunting.
Comment on the draft study will be accepted until June 11.
The Owens head Peninsula Citizens for the Protection of Whales. They argue that the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 is “the whales’ treaty with the government.” It bans the killing of whales.
For their part, the Makah argue that they reserved the right to hunt whales and seals when they signed the 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay.
Each side says the gulf between viewpoints is as wide as the treaty’s 160 intervening years.
Sea Shepherd, a militant anti-whaling and environmental group headquartered in Friday Harbor, announced it was forming a nonprofit environmental legal action arm March 3, World Wildlife Day.
Margaret Owen said two attorneys who were serving pro bono would attend the meeting, joining D.J. Schubert of the Washington, D.C.-based Animal Welfare Institute.
Wednesday’s meeting and one in Seattle on Monday will be hosted by the National Marine Fisheries Service, an arm of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which on March 6 released the 1,229-page draft environmental impact statement.
The Makah have sought to renew their centuries-old pursuit of whales since gray whales were removed from the Endangered Species List in 1994.
They killed a whale in a legal hunt in 1999 but since have been restrained by the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
A botched rogue hunt in 2007 ended in a gray whale being shot and dying several hours later, sinking in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
The fisheries service has proposed these alternatives in its draft study:
■ A no-action alternative would continue the moratorium on Makah whaling established in 2004 by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
■ Alternative 2 would let the Makah harvest as many as five Eastern North Pacific gray whales a year and a maximum of 24 over six years in tribal ocean fishing grounds except for a zone around Tatoosh Island and White Rock.
No more than seven whales could be “struck” — hit by explosive-head harpoons or .50-caliber bullets — in a year, and no more than three struck and lost.
The National Marine Fisheries Service, furthermore, could limit the harvest to three whales a year if the whale population shrank.
■ Alternative 3 also would prohibit Makah hunters from making an “initial strike” within 5 miles of shore and would set a probable “mortality limit” of 2.7 whales a year.
■ Alternative 4 would limit the hunt to June 1-Nov. 10 to avoid killing endangered Western Pacific gray whales — a population genetically distinct from Eastern Pacific whales — and limit mortality to one member of the Pacific Coast Feeding Group, so-called resident whales that range from Northern California to northern Vancouver Island.
■ Alternative 5 would open two 21-day-long hunting seasons — Dec. 1-21 and May 10-31 — to avoid killing a Western Pacific gray whale or a feeding-group whale. It also would set a probable limit of 0.27 whales a year, including any whale struck but not landed.
■ Alternative 6 would limit strikes to seven a year and set a probable mortality limit of 2.25.
Neither Makah Tribal Chairman Timothy Greene Sr. nor tribal Executive Director Meredith Parker could be reached Wednesday for comment about the meeting.
However, Parker said last month: “We feel secure in knowing our past and its link to the future. Whaling is something that is a large factor in our culture, then and today.”
At that time, Greene said, “Our treaty right to whaling is important to us spiritually and culturally.”
The Owens said they’d attend the meeting only “to be there, to listen,” and to request that the comment period be extended beyond its present deadline.
To see the draft environmental impact statement, find information about public meetings and comment on the proposal, visit http://tinyurl.com/PDN-drafteiswhaling.
Copies of the draft study also are available at public libraries in Clallam Bay, Forks, Port Angeles and Sequim.
Copies on CD are available by contacting Steve Stone at 503-231-2317 or steve.stone@NOAA.gov.
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
