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Over the weekend the Costa Rican President Oscar Arias along with Environmental Minister Robert Dobles signed a decree that would protect whales and dolphins from being hunted in the large Costa Rican waters. The decree details that any pursuit, capture, injury, netting or commercialization of any whale and dolphin groups in the Costa Rican sea boundaries is forbidden, and now against the law.
Traditionally Costa Rica has never fished or hunted for whales or dolphins in their waters and has never been an attraction or benefit to Tico fishermen unlike Japan or Iceland. This was a decree that was easy to put in place, one that would help promote good publicity for the government and Arias and Dobles made the most of it.
Arias even linked the decree to when 50 years ago the Costa Rican military was abolished saying that now Costa Rica was coming to peace with the environment whilst Dobles continue his promotion of stating that Costa Rica was at the ‘forefront’ of biodiversity internationally.
Despite coming under heavy pressure from the Japanese earlier this year, Dobles attended the International Whaling Convention and voted against reinstating a limited hunting proposal.
