Helen Clark accepts 150,000 signatures calling for the protection of Hector‘s and Māui dolphins from fisheries
Berlin – Representatives of German conservation group NABU International, led by the organisation’s Chair Olaf
Tschimpke, met with former Prime Minister Helen Clark in Berlin this week to discuss the need for greater protection of
Māui and Hector’s dolphins. Ms Clark also accepted over 150,000 signatures petitioning Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern,
Minister for Conservation Eugenie Sage, and Minister of Fisheries, Stuart Nash to fulfil an immediate ban on gill
netting and trawling across the dolphins‘ habitat.
Ms Clark was in Berlin to attend the German Council for Sustainable Development, for which Mr Tschimpke acts as Vice
Chair.
"We are delighted to be able to present our petition Ms Clark in person and urge her and her party’s coalition partners
to honour their pre-election promise of fully protecting the dolphins from harmful fishing methods as a matter of
urgency, “said Tschimpke. “Unless this happens, Maui dolphins won’t survive.”
NABU International has been highlighting the dolphins’ dwindling numbers and actively pursued their protection for
almost to a decade. Besides making representations to scientific forums, the organisation has funded and carried out
Maui and Hector’s dolphin research and engaged in national and international awareness and education initiatives.
"The disastrous decline of Maui dolphins to around 50 individuals is simply a case of cause and effect," said Dr Barbara
Maas, Head of Endangered Species Conservation at NABU International. “Less than 19 percent of their west coast North
Island habitat is currently free of gillnets, while trawling is prohibited in less than five percent. An immediate and
complete ban of these fishing methods across all of the dolphins’ habitat and transitioning affected fishermen to
dolphin-safe fishing methods or alternative livelihoods is the only way to ensure the dolphins’ survival,” said Maas.
International experts agree. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is the global authority on
the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it. Like the International Whaling Commission (IWC)
and the Society for Marine Mammalogy (SMM), the IUCN has confirmed that the immediate and widespread expansion of
existing protected areas across the dolphins’ entire habitat is essential to prevent their extinction.
"It is encouraging that two parties in New Zealand’s coalition government have pledged to do the right thing for the
country’s only endemic dolphin and New Zealand’s increasingly dented environmental reputation," said Maas. “Unless they
make good on their promise now, the small window of opportunity to save these exceptionally rare marine mammals will
close for good.”
ends