Conservation activist Watson says things 'people don't want to hear'

By Cathy Carlyle

Paul Watson at the 1998 Sea Shepherd seal protection campaign at the Gulf of St. Lawrence

Paul Watson - conservation activist and founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society - describes his job as "unusual... I say what people don't want to hear; I do things that people don't want to see being done."

At a talk in December at York's Faculty of Environmental Studies, Watson, fresh from a nine-day jail sentence in Newfoundland, was full of zeal for his causes and determination to inspire the students who turned out to hear him. He spoke of his jail term, which came nearly seven years after he and fellow Sea Shepherd members chased Spanish and Cuban drag trawlers off the Grand Banks.

"I thought I had the full weight of the Canadian government behind me," he said, "but they contradicted what they had been saying to Newfoundland fishermen [about who was entitled to fish in that area]. They called me a terrorist, when there is not one example of a violent act by any environmentalist or conservationist anywhere in any country against any single human being."

He added that, at first, he faced "two times life" as a sentence for trying to save some fish. "It's interesting: if you try and protect a fishery in this country, you are a criminal. But if you try to destroy a fishery, well, they make you premier of Newfoundland."

Watson spoke of a society that takes action against the blasphemy of, for example, the destruction of religious symbols ("the Wailing Wall, a picture of the Pope, marble in the Vatican, a chunk of meteorite in Mecca") but tolerates the destruction of life. "We are divorced and alienated from the natural world," he said. "Every day human beings walk into the most profoundly sacred, the most beautiful cathedrals on the planet - the redwood forests of California, the temperate rain forest of Vancouver Island, the rainforest of the Amazon - and we desecrate and destroy these cathedrals with bulldozers and chain saws."

He was gratified to see the number of protesters at the World Trade Organization (WTO) conference in Seattle. At last people are beginning to see some of the negative changes made by the WTO, he said, such as the overturning of legislation that made turtle-excluder devices mandatory on United States shrimp boats "because they ruled that countries that did not legislate the use of such devices were being discriminated against. And when we worked for 10 years to make sure that dolphins wouldn't be killed in tuna nets...and got this label 'dolphin-free tuna', what happened was that Mexico turned around and sued the US on the grounds that 'you won't buy our tuna because we kill dolphins and this is an unfair trade practice'. The WTO ruled against the US in that, and now we are back to killing dolphins again. What the WTO does, like NAFTA, is take domestic legislation...and bring it down to the lowest common denominator, so that the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act in the US are subservient to the dictates of the WTO."

Watson sees the rapidly-increasing human population as a major problem and asked where earth's breaking point will be. At the rate the population is expanding, it will reach 48 billion in 200 years and, he added, this planet cannot support that many people. At the same time, species of plants and animals are disappearing. "Between 1980 and 2040, we will lose over 26 per cent of all plant and animal species that were on the planet in 1980. That's not my prediction," he said. "That comes from the Global 2000 report prepared for President Carter in 1980, and from the Smithsonian Institute and the International Union of the Conservation of Nature. We have very little vision as humans, and we don't look into the future very far."

Some aspects of his work within the Sea Shepherd group are seen as outrageous, allowed Watson, but he foresees that soon he will no longer be viewed as a radical activist. "Everything I have done for the past 30 years will become very much acceptable because they are making a major motion picture about me. That means that once a $50 million movie is released I will, for the first time, exist within media culture," he said drily. "When the movie is out, I will become credible. That's the way the media culture works. The media defines our values." He pointed out that when big-name stars come on board for campaigns, [e.g. Brigitte Bardot against the baby-seals hunt], the world takes notice.

Any individual can make a positive difference in the world, he said. There was Dian Fossey working to save mountain gorillas in Rwanda and George Adamson saving lions in the Serengeti. "Governments don't make decisions that have any lasting impact upon important issues. Changes have been initiated in our environment due to individuals. Individuals make the difference."

He said people have to play the media game of dramatics to raise awareness in order to raise money for their causes. "When they ask why we sink whaling ships, we say that it is the only way the media will listen to us," said Watson. When people say, "What can I do?", he tells them to start an organization, a campaign of their own. "I'm not advising anyone to go out and be radical. Just do what you do best. Use your skills and put them into service in making this a better world tomorrow. Do it for tomorrow, not just for yourself.... Many species have human champions. I cannot think of anything more noble."

Master's student
talks of Watson

Ryan Young, a York master's student in Environmental Studies, wanted fellow students to hear "one of the veterans" in the conservation field. After a lengthy process and with sponsorship from the Faculty of Environmental Studies, OPIRG York, GSA and GESSA, he was able to bring conservation activist Paul Watson to York in December.

"He's a founding member of Greenpeace, he's been an environmental activist for over 28 years. Some people find him an extremist and too controversial, but many do respect him," said Young, citing David Suzuki and Farley Mowat as among those in the public eye who admire Watson. Young met Watson in 1996 when he was raising money for the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in his home base of Montreal, and even joined Watson and the Sea Shepherd crew in 1998 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to protest the Canadian commercial seal hunt.

"He is a passionate speaker who tries to inspire people and champion the individual. He wants people to see that one person can have a voice in society," said Young.