Denmark on Tuesday officially requested permission to resume hunting humpback whales off Greenland, in a move that has angered environmentalists.Ole Samsing, Danish commissioner at the annual International Whaling Commission (IWC) conference being held on the Portuguese island of Madeira, made the call and demanded a "quick solution"."We want to put forward a proposal for a quota of 10 humpback whales per year for the 2010-2012 period" in Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, Samsing said."We want a quick solution for this proposal," he added.Samsing said the hunting of humpbacks would be carried out under so-called "aboriginal" or subsistence hunting to support local communities.To compensate for resuming the humpback hunt, Samsing proposed reducing the quota of minke whales from 200 to 178.Commercial hunting of humpbacks has been banned since a moratorium in 1966.Greenland continued to legally capture the large marine mammals until 1987, when the ban was extended to "aboriginal" or subsistence hunting.The Danish plans drew criticism from environmental campaigners, who say Greenland does not need a quota increase."Overall since 1991, Greenland has taken only 77 percent of its whole available quota," the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) said in a statement urging the IWC to refuse the request."The IWC scientific committee has already made it clear that the humpback population can withstand 10 being captured a year," Portuguese commissioner Jorge Palmeirim, head of the sub-commission for subsistence whaling, told AFP earlier Tuesday."But the question is one of need, and it is not clear that they need to increase their quota," Palmeirim added.
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