One tends to speculate how WildAid's campaign, that claims its aim is to decrease consumption of shark fin soup to remove pressure on shark populations, might differ if it had been launched in the West rather than in Singapore.  In Singapore, WildAid spokesman, Peter Knights, toes a fine line.  He avoids the overt or implied prejudice fostered by the international NGO community's continual portrayal of Asian nations and cultures as predators on the environment ruthlessly in search of exotic foods and medicines.  Instead, he maintains a polite, if somewhat restrained public tolerance of traditional Asian dietary practices.

Knights is quick to tell the Asian press that his group simply wants to "bring shark (fin soup) consumption to sustainable levels".  Who determines what "sustainable levels" of soup consumption might be or who is or is not allowed to eat the delectable dish are fine points Mr. Knights neglects to mention.  Images of an international "soup police" beguile the imagination.

The champion of shark fin soup is Dr. Giam Choo Hoo, a member of England's Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.  At the opening bell of WildAid's campaign, Dr. Giam squared off against Mr. Knights and WildAid's fantastically wealthy benefactor, the Barbara Delano Foundation. 

The San Francisco-based Barbara Delano Foundation is the creation of an heir to the Upjohn Pharmaceutical family fortune with reserves estimated publicly to be $40 million, but within animal rights/environmental circles rumored to be five times that amount.  Mr. Knights has been termed variously the Foundation's "program director" and its "executive director". Regardless of which Foundation hat he wears, he is said to insure that the Foundation's resources place the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) projects as their highest funding priority.

Dr. Giam's first body punch doubled Mr. Knights who howled "foul" in protest.  Dr. Giam labeled Mr. Knights and his WildAid colleagues "extremists".  Not so rejoined, Mr. Knights.  In an editorial response, Mr. Knights asked "is the UN extremist, too?" and delivered a quote attributed to the UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) on the plight of sharks that appeared to place FAO in WildAid's camp.  Touché?  Well, almost.

That FAO quote was the opening line of a 1998 FAO press release.  Ironically, the release was trumpeting the very thing Knights and WildAid denies exists: a global shark fishery management plan. 

The subsequent report issued by FAO, that included the draft of the shark plan, roundly condemned the press release as inflammatory and inaccurate.  Penning an exaggerated opening line for a press release is expected from PR personnel hoping to attract the eye of a news editor and draw a pat on the back from his or her boss.  Using only that hyperbolic single line is not the stuff upon which a sound conservation program is built. 

An examination of Mr. Knights and WildAid's website demonstrates other unseemly exaggerations directly related to his attempt to wrap the credibility of the United Nations and FAO about their "save the shark from soup" campaign. 

On their homepage, WildAid claims "there are no international management plans (for sharks) whatsoever".  Yet, the news release Mr. Knights waved in defense of his organization against Dr. Giam was touting the FAO's creation of just such a plan.. 

At the request of the 1994 Conference of Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), FAO began work on such a plan almost immediately.  In 1998, representatives from 80 FAO member nations met and hammered out a draft management plan.  Under its guidelines, member nations are expected to have their own "shark plans" in effect by the next convening of FAO's Committee on International Fisheries (COFI) in 2001. 

Apparently too, Mr. Knights and WildAid never read any other FAO literature on sharks beyond that two-year old release.  If they had, WildAid's website claim that "no effort has been put into the management of shark catches" or that there is "very little data on overall shark catches" should never have been made.  The report on FAO's meeting on the "management" of "shark fisheries" stated that work on collecting such data had begun by no less than nine regional fishery management organizations at least two years before WildAid was hatched. 

The Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES), the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization, the Sub-regional Fisheries Commission of West African States, the Latin American Organization for Fishery Development, the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, the Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT), and the Oceanic Fisheries Programme of the Pacific Community all sounded the alarm to member nations to collect needed data.  A number had already established regional databases to store and analyze shark information. 

A "who's who" of WildAid's staff and officers tends to further support Dr. Giam's allegation that the WildAid campaign was an extreme attempt by extreme people.  Three of four listed principals are EIA.  The forth is the President of the Barbara Delano Foundation, Barbara Delano's daughter, Suwanna Gauntlett.  There are few peers in the international animal rights and environmental movement as extreme as EIA.

Truth is the first principle needed if we are to preserve the world's wild places and wildlife, on land or sea, for present and future generations.  WildAid and its campaign against shark fin soup appears to have little or no regard for factual accuracy in the claims they levy against shark fishermen, soup makers and consumers alike.  No matter the hat they wear or the organization they represent, extremists who shield the truth from the probing light of the public make poor champions of sharks or any other cherished part of the earth.