Garrett urged to suspend shark fin exports

Any of you Ausi's or anyone else who cares about Australia sharks, take a peek at this:

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The Nature Conservation Council of NSW is calling on the Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett to suspend the export of shark fins from Australia.

The council has obtained data from the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, which shows Australia has exported nearly 133,000 kilograms of frozen shark fin in the past 13 months.

The council's marine conservation officer, Giselle Firme, says that means about 10,000 sharks have been killed for their fins.

"Today is the deadline for Peter Garrett to reissue an export license," she said.

"Peter Garrett is able to not reissue that export license and actually put in certain conditions that would restrict the fisheries until they have enough information to control the fishery and not do so much damage to the shark population in Australia."

Ms Firme it is an increase of about 500 per cent on previous years.

"There are states such as NSW that don't have a history of shark fishing, so there is no information about the biology of the different shark species and what size the population is," she said.

"Therefore, you're going out and killing a lot of sharks and you don't know how that's going to affect the population. That's very dangerous."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06...tm?site=idx-nsw

We're yet to see our Minister for Environment doing anything worth while. I wouldn't hold your breath on this one!

Why we belived this government was telling the truth when they promised so many environmental aspects in their campaign is beyond me!

Our federal environment minister is such a very long way from the lead singer of Midnight Oil. It is depressing.

How can we sleep, indeed?

Yeh I was watching an old Midnight Oil video clip over the weekend....he certainly is abit different now he is in power. Be interesting to see what he does.

Even rec fishing in this country is really strange....rules an regulations for Whale Sharks, Dugons and Mantas for a tourist operator but go out in ya boat with ya beer belly fly ridden fish head Mates and you can harras and kill whatever for fun.

I hear this. So, how do we make an impact?