'Whale-huggers' restart a crusade they thought they'd won

[Recursion]

Self-described "whale-huggers" toughed chilling winds on the Santa Monica Pier on Sunday to restart a crusade they thought they'd won and to revise a familiar slogan: Save the Whales Again.

"We've been doing this too long, and now we're going to do it all over again. It's very tiresome," said John Perry, a sculptor who in the 1970s campaigned for a whaling ban with a 110-foot-long humpback whale balloon.

Perry was among about 120 people at the protest, one of 16 along the California coast targeting a proposal to lift the 1986 commercial whaling moratorium and set legal quotas for Japan, Norway and Iceland, the three nations that still hunt whales. The proposal aims to reduce the number of whales killed over 10 years, but opponents say it would reward rogue actions and legitimize hunting endangered species.

"It is a rationale that makes no sense," said Joel R. Reynolds, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Can we stop gang violence by allowing some gang warfare? The answer is no."

Read the rest: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/23/local/la-me-whale-day-20100524

I'm not sure how I feel about this. This was on the Diane Rehm Show yesterday and I'm kind of torn. The terms of the proposed amendment actually reduce the amount of whales killed de facto. I understand the desire to keep whaling illegitimate, but is the goal to shame whalers or to save whales?

Edit: wrong radio show