Sea Shepherd Crushing Dissent?

We have been critics of Sea Shepherd for the past year at this blog. Along with a growing number of others we have been hammering away at what appears to be a conservation org based on media fabrications, distortions, and an ongoing complete lack of credibility.

SSCS manages a 1970's direct action eco strategy that has all but failed to effect real conservation change. This strategy has been wildly successful in attracting millions in conservation donor dollars and a reality television show.

Dissent and Conservation

It is important that dissent is kept alive and well within the conservation community. Dissent and critique are the twin guides by which the conservation world polices itself. Or should be.

Global strategies and conservation efforts should be guided by clear and definable metrics for success. This is the basis of conservation. Choose targets well and roll out a careful and successful strategy to effect conservation change.

When conservation orgs fail to deliver conservation change they, as public entities, should be held to account. The money they accept is public money.

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society does not like dissent, or opposition to any of it's ongoing and very public conservation antics. We have discovered this first hand.

This blog is re posted on a series of blog aggregators and other sites. Over the past year SSCS has been quietly emailing and demanding these sites take our critiques of SSCS down.

The implied threat is one of legal action by SSCS.

Using vague and varied legal terms, SSCS has accused this blog of falsely reporting "facts" and basic muckraking against SSCS.

These are counter accusations coming a conservation group featuring Paul Watsons ongoing claims and faked video that he was "shot by Japanese whalers." A media "fact" that has all but been completely discredited including most recently by popular media's South Park.

When conservation critique is quashed, we lose the ability to guide the overall direction of conservation efforts. The very efforts that the public funds through donations.

We are all in the business of real and lasting conservation change - or should be.

This blog will continue to point out failed eco strategy in the hopes that change will happen. The fact SSCS chooses to deflect dissent is one indication that we are on the right track.

Faked hostage events, faked attempted assassinations, and made for television vessel rammings do nothing to save whales, sharks, seals or change eco policy in any country. Recently SSCS suffered a multi million dollar loss when the Canadian Government sized their sister vessel the Farley Mowat and sold it at auction. Seals will be slaughtered again this spring and the entire SSCS seal campaign was a loss, both monetarily and to the conservation movement.

To those few who support SSCS the world has changed since the 1970's. We need new strategy, new conservation goals, and new direction, not hyper inflated eco media.

Consider what you are doing, what you have been doing, and ask yourself...has anything really changed? Where are the solid, lasting metrics for conservation change?

Sea Shepherd - Hemorrhaging on the Law

As the months grind on for Sea Shepherd and titular head Paul Watson, you have to ask the question "do they even have a plan anymore?".

As we have documented over the past year SSCS direct action policy is floundering both in Canada and Australia where the SSCS have come up against something they frequently demand International adherence to - the rule of law.

It would seem when SSCS quote the rule of law it justifies almost any action from ramming vessels to fabricating media output. When the rule of law is against them, those "others" are quickly and skillfully transformed into pirates, evil doers, and eco monsters by the SSCS media machine. Often to little effect as the rule of law grinds on and over the SSCS.

Your ongoing donations are fueling this wholesale direct action disaster.

In Canada, direct action vessel Farley Mowat was seized and auctioned off to howls of protest by SSCS who devoted their time to rewriting and blogging about the "facts" of the encounter and Canadian rule of law. The vessel was caught breaking the law and in due process lost SSCS donors close to one million dollars when this vessel was sold off last month. Fact is the SSCS anti-sealing plan failed in a spectacular gamble that might have worked better if SSCS had just handed a cool million to the sealers and told them to go home.

To add to the ongoing gamble, Captain Alex Cornelissen of the Netherlands and 1st Officer Peter Hammarstedt of Sweden failed to appear in Canadian court on April 27th. They will be tried in absentia and most likely found guilty, banned from Canada forever as fugitives.

Direct Action Policy

The rule of law is not pretty, particularly when applied to wildlife. Treaties and governments often produce rules and regulations that do great damage to wildlife. These are also the constraints that all eco group with credibility operate under. There is a playing field, there are rules. If you want to get anything done in the eco world you have to build alliances, consensus, and work within the confines, or just outside the confines of the rule of law. This works and groups help wildlife everyday, changing rules, saving wildlife.

SSCS failed 1970's direct action techniques are costing donors millions, and as with the case in Japan have now opened near shore whaling operations - handing down a death sentence to whales off the coasts of Japan. This is the true face of direct action when applied without skill, and without a coherent plan with an eye to the rule of law.

Let's rethink the plan. Hemorrhaging eco dollars and media into high profile wildlife issues gains little and helps no one.