Participants at a global wildlife conservation conference on Thursday rejected Japan's revised proposals to lift an international ban on trade in minke whales.
The decision was made at a plenary session of the conference of signatory countries to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), known as the Washington Treaty. The conference began Nov. 3 and will end Saturday.
Japan's call for lifting the international bans on commercial trading in minke whales caught in the Northern Hemisphere and Bryde's whales caught in the North Pacific was rejected at a committee meeting Nov. 8.
Japan revised its proposal in response to this rejection, calling for an end only to the ban on commercial trading in minke whales caught in the North Pacific, and presented this at the plenary session.