© Environment News Service (ENS) 2000
July 24, 2000
By Andrew Darby

HOBART, Australia, July 24, 2000 (ENS) - A pioneering international agreement to protect southern hemisphere seabirds is being developed, despite the absence from the talks of major fishing countries.

A 12 nation meeting in Hobart last week was told that each day of their meeting, about 1,000 albatrosses and petrels died on longline hooks. Unless action was taken, then in as little as 10 years' time many albatross species could become extinct.

But despite the presence of countries such as the United States and United Kingdom at the talks hosted by the Australian Government, fishing nations in the hemisphere including Japan and Spain were absent.

Australia's Environment Minister, Senator Robert Hill, said as he opened the meeting that he was particularly disappointed about Japan's absence because of the scale of its southern operations.

"There may be a fear by Japan in some way this will interfere with their legitimate fishing practice," Hill said. "That's not what this process is all about." A Japanese Embassy spokesman in Canberra said Tokyo acknowledged the meeting's importance, but did not have anyone available to attend.

Hill said the loss of albatross and petrels had been one of the sad legacies of the last 100 years. Australia now lists four species of albatross as endangered, and a further 13 as vulnerable.

Most critically endangered is the Amsterdam albatross, thought to be limited to a global population of 90, with only 20 breeding pairs. The world's largest seabird, the 3.4 metre wingspan wandering albatross, is listed as vulnerable.

Draft proposals hammered out at the meeting aim to set up the most extensive agreement yet negotiated under the framework of the Convention on Migratory Species, known as the Bonn Convention. While a series of other regional agreements have been reached under the CMS, none covers such a large area of the world.

The agreement would make it mandatory for signatory countries to act to cut seabird deaths, particularly as a result of longline fishing. Measure such as night-setting of line, the use of bird scaring devices, and techniques for fast bait submersion may be brought into operation under individual countries' plans of action.

Humane Society International's observer at the meeting, Nicola Beynon, said it was a breakthrough when the meeting agreed to make these plans legally binding. Such measures are only voluntary under United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation rules, she said.

Beynon said fishing nations had no reason to be nervous of the agreement, which proposed measures no different from others in place to govern Antarctic fishing, and for bluefin tuna. She warned of the consequences for those nations if they failed to become involved. "If they don't come on board it will show them in a very poor light."

The meeting's Australian chairman, Stephen Hunter, said he believed key fishing nations would be interested to join the negotiations once they had seen the draft agreement. It also proposes habitat conservation, better scientific knowledge of the birds, and public education. Error: Unable to read footer file.