This week, Chris Butler Stroud, WDCS Chief Executive, delivered the opening speech at the Convention on Migratory Species of Wild Animals(CMS) in Rome, Italy. Joining Prince Albert of Monaco and the Italian Minister for the Environment, Butler-Stroud greeted representatives from over 100 countries to the CMS week-long Conference of Parties(CoP), which will be crucial for the long term survival of many whaleand dolphin species.
Butler Stroud stated that never before have the threats been so great; the impacts of human activities so strongly felt from climate change, bycatch, habitat loss, noise,pollution and teetering ecological balances. He challenged Governments to work together with non-government organisations to repay the richness that we’ve received from our swimming, flying, walking or running friends by giving them our steadfast commitment that we will ensure their protection and the protection of our shared habitat on earth.
At the CMS Conference which lasts from the 1st to the5th December in Rome, Italy, WDCS will campaign for urgent action to betaken to protect whales and dolphins, including for new regional conservation agreements to be established, especially in the Indian Ocean and South East Asia, as well as establishing Marine Protected Areas in international waters.
WDCS aims to achieve 12 large Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) for whale and dolphin species worldwide by 2012, a campaign which is supported by Team Russia. With almost a quarter of the world’s whale and dolphin species known to be threatened with extinction, time is running out fast for some of the world’s most endangered mammals.
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