Our Mission: To Protect Whales

I'm writing to you today because my friends at The Humane Society of the United States and I need your help. More importantly, the whales of the world desperately need a hero.

Unless we speak up now, the International Whaling Commission, which has banned commercial whaling for more than 25 years, may surrender to commercial whaling interests: It is poised to give its blessing to commercial whaling, even in the pristine waters of the Antarctic Southern Ocean Sanctuary.

The Obama administration has the power to stop this cruelty. That’s why I’m asking for your help: Please join me in sending a message to President Obama now to urge him NOT to endorse a deal that effectively lifts the ban but instead to enforce and strengthen it.

The United States has long understood that the only way to save whales is to outlaw commercial whaling. That's why it has championed the ban on commercial whaling that has been in place since 1986.

But next month, more than 80 nations will come together to consider a deal to end this international ban -- and if they do, it will give Japan, Iceland and Norway a license to kill whales. And believe it or not, officials in the Obama administration are supporting this ill-conceived deal and thus declaring open season on the oceans’ most majestic creatures.

Please tell President Obama this is no time to abandon the whales, who are no longer seen as a commercial commodity, but an integral part of our ecosystem.

Unless you act now, members of the Obama administration will push other nations to pass a secret backroom deal that would suspend the moratorium on commercial whaling and make decades of conservation efforts to bring these species back from the brink of extinction meaningless.

Why? Because rogue nations such as Japan, Norway, and Iceland refuse to obey the quarter-century long moratorium.

We cannot allow three nations to decide the fate of the world’s whales. In 1982, the nations of the world recognized that whales could not survive if commercial whaling continued. In 2010, when whales face even more threats than ever before -- including toxic pollution, climate change, loss of habitat, ship strikes, and oil and gas exploration -- how could anyone believe it's safe to let whalers off their leash?

On June 21, the International Whaling Commission will meet to decide whether to effectively lift the prohibition on commercial whaling for the next decade. The United States and YOU can make all the difference.

Please tell President Obama to reverse course and keep the ban and enforce it.

Tell him that the United States must protect whales, not whaling nations. Let him know that you want him to stand up and fight for the lives of these animals. He has the opportunity to be a hero, and the whales need one now.

Sincerely,
Pierce Brosnan
Actor and whale activist