§ Mr. Stephen Rossasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list in the Official Report the sources used or to be used by his Department in carrying out for the Secretariat of the Washington Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, a review of the status of cetaceans; and if he will further state the name of the person entrusted to carry out the review and his qualifications for the task.
§ Mr. Denis HowellThe United Kingdom is co-ordinating reviews by scientists in Canada, the United States, South Africa and this country.
Specialist research here will be carried out under a contract placed by the 627W Nature Conservancy Council with Professor R. J. Harrison, F.R.S., Department of Anatomy at Cambridge University. He has extensive knowledge of cetaceans and has published many scientific papers and books on them. He is being assisted by Dr. Margaret Klinowska.
The International Whaling Commission has offered the scientific data available to it, and, apart from the results obtained by the other countries participating in the review, among his sources will be the Scott Polar Institute, the Environmental Law Centre, Bonn, as well as appropriate Government bodies in countries not directly involved in the review.