New Content Available in the CSG Online Library
In September 2004, IUCN convened an independent scientific review panel with a mandate to (i) assess potential threats to western gray whales from an offshore oil and gas development project called Sakhalin-II Phase 2 and (ii) evaluate and advise on mitigation measures proposed by the project operator, Sakhalin Energy Investment Company (SEIC). Thus began a 17-year oversight program involving a series of IUCN-convened panels consisting of experts from the Russian Federation, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States, intended to provide guidance to the oil and gas industry to minimize the risks to gray whales and their habitat on the north-eastern Sakhalin shelf.
In addition to the publication of panel meeting and task force reports, the Western Gray Whale Advisory Panel (WGWAP), and its predecessors, issued open letters to Russian government agencies, statements of concern to stakeholders and more than 600 formal recommendations directed primarily at offshore oil and gas companies but also at Russian regulatory authorities.
WGWAP’s final meeting took place in Gland, Switzerland in November 2021 and its corresponding final report was finalized in January 2022 but was never officially released or posted online. In fact, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, IUCN permanently removed the entire dedicated, publicly accessible WGWAP body of work from its website. The Cetacean Specialist Group (CSG), with the invaluable help of DJ Shubert of the Animal Welfare Institute, has managed to recover a large portion of the IUCN panel-related material (including in excess of 80 reports and documents) and make it available once again here on a dedicated page of our CSG online Library.
Additionally, a large portion of the Marine Mammal Holarctic Conference proceedings is now publicly accessible on the CSG website here under the ‘Useful Links and References’ section of our CSG online Library. The CSG is grateful to Vladimir Burkanov for providing those materials.