Sea Shepherd Legal, a new international non-profit environmental law firm, has emerged on the scene and has aimed all of its resources and efforts towards the saving of the marine wildlife and habitats via enforcing, strengthening, and developing a number of protective laws, treaties, policies and practices on a worldwide basis.
Sea Shepherd Legal decided to go with World Wildlife Day 2015 for its official public launch date in order to respond as well as strongly endorse UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s World Wildlife Day message that "It is high time we got serious when talking about wildlife crime."
Our oceans are overharvested and under-protected, thus sadly they are dying, commented Sea Shepherd via a statement.
“A large number of marine wildlife species are at the brink of extinction and whole marine ecosystems are facing the possibility of a total collapse. At this current moment there are only a few international environmental conventions that to some extent provide measures of protection when regarding marine wildlife, and domestic laws are full of loopholes and tend to lack the proper enforcement. We must act immediately if we are to build a comprehensive legal framework that will address and efficiently deal with this burgeoning disaster.
“With the help of a strong team of attorneys, scientific advisors and various partners, Sea Shepherd Legal aims to employ tactics such as litigating in order to make sure that proper governmental agency action is a fact, along with petitioning for the listing of marine species, as well as developing innovative legal policy and diplomatic approaches aimed at encouraging better enforcement against poaching and the senseless slaughter of marine wildlife.”
Along with its direct legal and policymaking actions Sea Shepherd Legal plans to perform significant outreach activities aimed at educating the general public, government representatives and officials, as well as other various non-governmental organizations, and stakeholders whose activities involve or have an impact on the marine environment and wildlife.
“Typically, there are 2 kinds of people – those who are completely unaware of the crisis facing our oceans, and those that don’t realize the importance and the mere scale of the issue. Without outreach exposure to the marine environments’ beauty or to the impacts upon biodiversity of shark finning and overfishing, this current lack of awareness is going to remain present for a while,” the organization further added.
Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General, stated :
" If we want to get serious about wildlife we must enroll the support of all sections of society that are involved in both the production and consumption of wildlife products, which have a wide use in the form of medicines, food, building materials, furniture, cosmetics, clothing and various other accessories. Law enforcement efforts have to receive the full and unconditional support of the larger part of the community."
By aiming their efforts towards the engaging of governments as well as law enforcement officials and the public, Sea Shepherd Legal gives its direct response to this call to action, the organization comments.