aquarium gets okay to keep hurt animals, No-whales group outraged

2007-06-26

Christina Montgomery, The Province

Six months after approval of an $80-million expansion of its dolphin and beluga pools, the Vancouver Aquarium has a new tool for filling them.

The Vancouver parks board tweaked a controversial 11-year-old bylaw last night to allow the aquarium to not only take in injured animals, but to keep them.

The 1996 bylaw, enacted after an outcry about the unregulated capture of dolphins off Japan, barred the aquarium from bringing in any cetaceans captured after 1996.

It could adopt those born in captivity or those judged to be endangered.

The amendment, passed over the heated objections of critics at last night's meeting, lets the aquarium bring in whales or dolphins that "have been injured or are otherwise in distress and in need of assistance to survive, whether or not the intention is to release them back into their natural wild habitat."

Animal activists have argued the change in the bylaw is meant to help insure a steady stream of animals for the bigger pools, approved in November as part of a 0.6-hectare expansion of the aquarium.

Robert Light, spokesman for No Whales in Captivity, called rehabilitation a "cover" for acquiring captive animals.

"This is a loophole you could put a whale through," he said. "Would you do this to a human being?"

Light suggested that his group might launch a boy- cott of the aquarium's spon- sors.

Aquarium president John Nightingale told the board the goal remains the release of all rehabilitated animals whenever possible.