Lee Metcalf: “the Makah Indian Tribe in Washington State has been granted special permission by the Clinton-Gore administration to…”

“the Makah Indian Tribe in Washington State has been granted special permission by the Clinton-Gore administration to kill four gray whales each year. They have already killed one whale and injured at least one. By the way, for every whale killed, there is an average of two that are injured and get away. But last year, I filed an appeal along with several co-plaintiffs to overturn the decision made by the U.S. District Court to allow whaling by the Makah Indian Tribe. Two months ago, a three-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court handed down a decision in that case. The decision specifically confirmed my position. We won. Whale killing was ended. The only way the Clinton-Gore administration would be able to gain approval for this whale hunt now would be to blatantly violate the Federal environmental protections law. In fact, the court specifically asked, and I quote from the decision language, ``Can the Federal Defendants now be trusted to take the clear-eyed hard look at the whaling proposal's consequences required by law, or will a new (Environmental Assessment) be a classic Wonderland case of first-the-verdict, then-the-trial?'' Alice in Wonderland, indeed. However, in this story, the heads that are being chopped off belong to the majestic gray whales that ply the western coast of America and each year travel north to the Bering Sea and occasionally even to Siberia.”