When the Minister of Fisheries in St. Kitts called for commerical whale hunting in the Caribbean the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) asked “its supporters worldwide to send notice to the Ministers of Tourism throughout the Caribbean, urging them to support whale watching over whale hunting”. (There’s more about the campaign at the IFAW website.) Apparently, as a result, Caribbean Ministers of Tourism received over 65,000 e-mails and faxes condemning commercial whaling and supporting whale-watching. That’s pretty impressive. Until now, I’d never really imagined that sort of letter-writing campaign strategy to be particularly effective, but this has changed my mind; such campaigns can be a good way to let people in positions of authority know the force of public opinion.

1316 days ago