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Definitely no - unless it was going to be put in danger - maybe a couple of aggressive dogs or cats who want a new toy.  They are protected - which means you have the responsibility to take all reasonable care so that it has a safe trip through your yard to wherever it's going.  Well that's my view anyway- but I'm sure National Parks & Wildlife would agree with me.

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Yes there is.  If there was a witness to the fact that your cat or dog ate the lizard and it was reported - you would be visited by a ranger and given a warning in regard to your pet.

You would be warned a second time, if the same incident occurred and it was witnessed and reported, but the third time - the ranger would have the right to impound your pet.

Japan urging other countries to jump on whaling bandwagon

http://www.greendaily.com/2008/03/04/japan-urging-other-countries-to-jump-on-whaling-bandwagon/

Have you been having a hankering for a big juicy whaleburger lately that your local Arby's can't seem to fill? Well, if pro-whaling nations get their way, blubber could be back on the menu around the globe.

Not content with achieving international pariah status for the annual dolphin slaughter , Japan is looking to shore up the legitimacy of its whaling industry by encouraging other countries to climb aboard.

Japan and several other nations, including Norway and Iceland, have long lobbied to reverse the opinion of much of the planet that the current moratorium on whaling should be maintained. Now, tired of fighting with Western whale-huggers, the cetecean-slaughtering nations are seeking new allies in the war on our closest maritime cousins.

Prior to the meeting of the International Whaling Commission in London this week, the Japanese delegation is hosting seminars on the concept of sustainable whaling for 12 countries, including Angola, Eritrea, and Micronesia .

Why do we care what Micronesians think about whaling? Well, the implications could be serious, in fact downright fatal if you happen to weigh 50 tons and live underwater - at present anti-whaling nations are the larger voting bloc in the IWC, but if more pro-whaling countries were to join, a vote in favour of renewed killing of whales could be passed.

The whalers argument is that that the anti-whaling movement is simply a cultural artifact unique to certain Western countries, and should have no bearing on what is a legitimate food source. By that logic whales are simply another animal, and harpooning a whale is pretty much the same as killing a chicken (although requiring more specialized tools).

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Dolphin slaughter brings charges from both sides

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/02/11/japan.dolphins/?iref=mpstoryview&source=cmailer

TAIJI, Japan (CNN) -- Mention a dolphin to someone in the United States and they'll think about a trip to Sea World or the 1960s-era TV program "Flipper."

Talk about a dolphin in rural Japan and some people think of dinner.

Fishermen hunt dolphins about every day in Taiji, a town of about 3,000 in southwestern Japan that juts into the Pacific Ocean.

Locals know they offend Western sensibilities by eating dolphins, but they say it's a tradition hundreds of years old. And they say outsiders have no more right to tell them to stop eating dolphins than they would have to demand that Westerners stop slaughtering, say, chickens or cows.  Watch fishermen catch dolphins »

"I know there are many different ways of thinking in different societies, but for us who've been eating this for a long time ... it's an awkward thing to be criticized for," says Kayoko Tanaka, a retired middle school teacher. "I either fry dolphin meat or turn it into a stew."

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Japan denies Sea Shepherd claims

http://news.smh.com.au/japan-denies-sea-shepherd-claims/20080307-1xv6.html

Japan has dismissed as a lie claims by the captain of an anti-whaling ship he was shot at during the latest confrontation with a whaling vessel in the Southern Ocean.

Paul Watson, captain of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society protest ship the Steve Irwin, said he felt a thud and found a bullet lodged in his bulletproof vest during a clash between the two vessels.

He said crew members on the Steve Irwin were throwing stink bombs at the whaling ship the Nisshin Maru when Japanese coast guards responded by throwing flash grenades.

The anti-whaling group said besides Mr Watson, two other crew members, both Australians, were hurt in the incident.

Ralph Lowe, 33, from Melbourne, had a bruised back after a flash grenade exploded behind him and Ashley Dunn, 35, from Launceston, suffered a hip injury when he tried to get out of the way of the explosions.

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Govt mulls action against Japan whaling

http://news.smh.com.au/govt-mulls-action-against-japan-whaling/20080307-1xv1.html

The federal government is still considering whether it should pursue legal action against Japan over its whaling program.

Australia also wants the IWC to protect whales from a host of threats including climate change, pollution, collisions with ships and fisheries activities.

mantra - yes, I feel it is quite well known the scientific research on whales is a farce.
As one person put it, the experiment result is  :- 
"Look, we chop its head off and it dies. same as the last 3000."

Was quite facinated by the discussion on this thread. Good arguments Freediver. Just wanted to add a thing from a norwegian perspective that hasnt gotten a lot of attention here.

From the period 1981-2002, several improvements in hunting technic and equipment have increased the imediate killing of minke whales from 17% to 80%, lowered the average survival time from 11 to 2 minutes and the need for reshooting the animal from 17% to 0.5%.

These numbers are better then for any other type of animal hunting, perhaps except for hunting for young seal (difficult to miss with a club I guess). This might be just for Norway, I dont realy know.

As a sidenote, since 1993 all whaling vessels has had a specially trained veterenarian onboard to oversee that the killing of minke was done in a propper way. I think I read somewhere that this has been stepped down somewhat lately, but I cant be sure.

These numbers are taken from this page: (not allowed to post links), which is posted by the norwegian gouvernment, and are of course based on studies. Numbers might have changed since then. I am sorry that I cant get this in english, tried a short search, but couldnt find it.

Looks like cooler heads have prevailed, just a shame the government wasted a million dollars pandering to the animal libers and reactionists.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23662989-601,00.html

AUSTRALIA is likely to abandon its $1 million attempt to take Japan to the international court over whaling after New Zealand gave up its plans to use legal action to stop the annual cull.

The Rudd Government embraced the use of the UN's international court soon after theelection, using aircraft and ships to gather evidence against Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean.

But the New Zealand Government has since discovered "significant difficulties" with taking Japan to the international court and has abandoned the tactic.

Ahead of official visits to Japan by Kevin Rudd next month and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith this week, expectation is growing that Australia's aggressive attempt to take Japan to court over whaling will lapse.

Last night, Mr Smith told The Australian the Government would make a final decision on whether to pursue Japan in an international court "at an appropriate time" based on legal advice and the evidence gathered by the Customs vessel Oceanic Viking.

The aggressive position of Environment Minister Peter Garrett strained relations with Japan and threatened to overshadow Mr Rudd's trip.

In December, Australia issued a demarche, or formal diplomatic protest, on behalf of numerous nations over Japan's plans to cull about 900 minke whales and 50 fin whales.

It is estimated that Australia's "evidence gathering" to form a case against Japanese whalers in an international court, which included the voyage of the Oceanic Viking and aerial surveillance, cost taxpayers more than $1 million. The Rudd Government has been "considering" the evidence for three months and has still not made a decision.

The release of dramatic footage showing whales being towed onto Japanese ships this year outraged Australians, but in Japan there was a backlash against Australia and a surge in support for whaling.

Linking the actions of the Sea Shepherd with Canberra has deepened Tokyo's concerns the Rudd Government is pro-Chinese to the point of being anti-Japanese.

Mr Robb said the Prime Minister had sent a "gun boat" after Japanese whaling ships without picking up the phone to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.

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Norway opens whale-hunting season

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3701805.stm

Whaling vessels have left Norway for the Barents Sea to open this year's whale-hunting season, defying an international moratorium and protests.
The Norwegian government has set a quota of 670 minke whales for the season, which runs until 31 August.

The Scandinavian nation is the only country in the world that authorises whaling for commercial purposes.

Iceland and Japan are the only other nations to fish whales, though they claim to do so for scientific reasons.

National pride

Norway started commercial whaling again in 1993, despite an international ban on the practice seven years earlier.

It argues the hunt is needed to stop the whale population from growing so large that it devours huge stocks of fish. It says the minke whale population levels remain healthy and are not endangered by its annual hunt.

However, environmental group Greenpeace told AFP news agency that demand for whale meat in Norway was diminishing.

It accuses the Norwegian government of persisting with its controversial whaling policy to prop up national pride.

Grenade-tipped harpoons

Controversy has also focused on the manner in which the whales are killed.

Environmentalists say the grenade-tipped harpoons that explode inside the beast are unnecessarily cruel.

Whalers argue it is one of the quickest methods for killing a whale.

The first whaling vessels left Norway to hunt in the North Sea last week. But the main catches are made in the area of the North Atlantic known as the Barents Sea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_Norway

Whaling in Norway is a centuries long tradition in Northern Norway. Only Minke whaling is permitted, from a population of 107,000 animals in the North East Atlantic and is argued by proponents and government officials to be sustainable.

Animal rights and anti-whaling groups have commented that given Norway's economic position it is paradoxical that this is one of a very small number of countries actively engaged in, and favouring the continuation of, commercial whaling. This is despite the argued negligible contribution that whaling makes to the economy, and despite opposition from around the world. Many supporters of whaling agree that its macroeconomic importance is negligible, but hold that the livelihood of individuals and small firms depend on it and that sustainable development depends on human harvesting of all non-endangered species, and that it is an important part of culture in coastal areas. Norway's whaling today is limited to the non-endangered Minke whale, which are killed using explosive penthrite grenade harpoons, which also accounts for more than 90% of the catch in Norwegian waters since the 1920s.

Not much happening here, but I thought I'd poste a link to an "official" document to prove what I said before. Not the same page as i linked to before, but the information is much the same.

http://www.iwcoffice.org/_documents/commission/IWC60docs/60-17.pdf

Sorry about that. Post and link I was refering to (well, I couldnt realy link since I was a guest) is six posts above this one, starting with "Was quite facinated by the discussion "