This week saw some news that under normal circumstances would be greeted with celebration and be seen as a showcase for the possibilities of conservation efforts. In the US, the wolf has been removed from the endangered species list in three states with another three states likely to follow. After three decades, conservation efforts have brought the iconic species back from the edge of extinction after being taken to the brink by hunting.
But in the same breath in which the news of the wolf's return was announced, it was also announced that the removal of the endangered species tag from the wolf's name means that they can now be legally hunted again. The very thing that placed the species on the endangered species list in the first place was to be allowed once more.
Whether the spokesperson for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, who announced the good news for hunters, understood the irony wasn't recorded. The imminent resumption of wolf hunting raises the question of whether conservation efforts around the world are there for the sake of the species and the ecosystems in which they live or simply for the sake of future exploitation.
It also brings into stark relief the question of who 'owns' wildlife. The question may seem absurd as the word 'wildlife' implies that the animals are free of ownership. But they are 'owned' even if to a limited extent by the nation that they live in. In this sense, it is everyone in the country who theoretically owns a stake in each animal or species.
So what happens when a small number of people bring species back from near extinction to more plentiful numbers? Do they have a greater say in the management of the species, to hunt or not to hunt, given it was their efforts that brought the species back to more abundant numbers?
Management of wild species is hard enough in areas where strict management can be enforced and the animals can be regularly monitored to ensure they aren't being overexploited, but what if the species in question lives in areas of limited or no law enforcement?
The 'high seas', the area of ocean that is beyond national jurisdiction, covers more than half the Earth's surface and has limited regulation or law enforcement. The Law of the Sea, the main international law governing the high seas, says that the high seas and the resources in it belong to all the people of the world, whether their country has a coastline or not.
In the middle of the ocean however, hundreds of kilometres from land, there is no international maritime police or any other law enforcement. There is nothing to stop the overexploitation of resources whilst hidden from the rest of the world by the massive expanse of the ocean.
This is exactly what happened in the early-mid twentieth century with the various whale populations around the world. The hunting free-for-all that characterised the first century or so of high seas whaling was supposed to come to an end with the formation of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in the 1930's. The IWC was set up to manage the number of whales being hunted to ensure the whaling industry had a never-ending supply of whales. In other words, the IWC tried to create a sustainable hunt, even if the word sustainable wasn't as fashionable then as it is now.
In 1986 after years of campaigning by huge numbers of people around the world, the IWC placed a moratorium on commercial whaling just in time to save many species from becoming extinct.
The creation of the moratorium on commercial whaling wasn't just a last ditch effort to save whale species from extinction, it was an admission that after trying to regulate whaling for 50 years, the IWC had completely failed. It was a failure of international law enforcement, of promises made and promises broken.
For 50 years the commercial imperative to make money outweighed the environmental imperative to not overexploit a resource. Without enforcement of hunting quotas, the whalers routinely caught many more whales than they were allowed, quickly pushing species near to extinction.
Twenty years on it would be tempting to think that the world has learnt the lesson of overexploitation. Only last year however, the Japanese tuna fishers admitted to cheating on their Southern Bluefin Tuna (SBT) quotas in one of the most regulated fisheries in the world. Approximately 20 billion Australian dollars worth of tuna had been illegally caught, so much illegally caught tuna was removed from the ocean that it was calculated that if the cheating hadn't occurred, the current stock of SBT would be five times larger than it is today.
Right now in the Southern Ocean, the whale hunt is on once again. It is called research whaling this time to avoid having to comply with the exact letter of the law, which prohibits commercial whaling, but it is whaling nonetheless.
When people work for three decades to bring the wolf back from near extinction in the US and when the world cried out in anger twenty years ago to force the whale hunt to stop, it wasn't so the wolves and whales could be hunted sometime in the future. It was to protect them after coming so close to wiping them out and now that the species are back from the edge of extinction, a return to the old ways is just not an option.