IWC grants US and Russia bowhead whale quota

High North News (14.10.02): A Special IWC meeting ended today in Cambridge UK by adopting a US-Russian quota for bowhead whales for the next five year.

The Special Meeting was called for because the joint five-year quota request by the US and Russia had been rejected at the ordinary annual meeting of the IWC in May, 2002, in Japan.

The decision allows US Alaskan Eskimos and the native people of Chukotka, Russia, to hunt 280 bowhead whales over the next five years, with an annual average of 51 bowheads for the US and five for Russia.