Japan has announced that it will withdraw from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in order to restart commercial whaling in July. This means that in just a few months time, more whales will start being killed and it may drive some species to extinction - our government must negotiate with Japan to stop this happening.

When Japan leaves the IWC, they will be able to freely hunt species of this incredible animal that are currently under protection. Japan has tried to justify this decision by saying that some whale populations - such as Minke whales - have recovered. But the population of the Minke whale is still not large enough to survive increased whaling, and most whale populations have not yet recovered, such as the Blue whale and Fin whale.

Despite the IWC ban Japan has continued to catch between 200 and 1,200 wales every year for what they call “scientific reasons”. If Japan does not change its decision to withdraw then we won’t know how many more whales they are catching, and we wouldn’t know how many of these beautiful animals we’d be losing.

Please sign my petition to tell the UK government to pressure the Japanese authorities to stop the unnecessary slaughter of Whales and to remain members of the IWC.