The Western Gray Whales Advisory Panel (WGWAP) provides objective scientific, technical and operational recommendations it believes are necessary or useful for conserving the Western Gray Whale population (see WGWAP Terms of Reference). Those include advice to Sakhalin Energy on measures to manage risks on western gray whales and their habitat associated with the company's oil and gas operations.
All the WGWAP's recommendations as well as the ones issues by preceding advisory bodies - the Independent Scientific Review Panel (ISRP), related workshops and the Interim Independent Scientists Group (IISG) - are centralized into the Recommendations Database, publicly available and searchable by categories and topics.
Click here or on the image below to browse the database.
This database is expected to be a valuable tracking tool for all stakeholders. As such, the Panel wishes to emphasize that:
- It is the responsibility of IUCN to manage the database and ensure that all formal recommendations from the Panel as well as all formal responses by Sakhalin Energy and other parties (as applicable) are included in it;
- Although other parties including Sakhalin Energy and IUCN are encouraged to provide advice and suggest changes, the designation of current status for each recommendation (i.e. closed vs. open etc.) is for the Panel to decide and the final determination rests with the Panel’s Co-Chairs;
- Status designations can be changed at any time, i.e. the database is meant to be a "living" source. However, changes must be made according to a set procedure that involves consultation by IUCN with the Panel Co-Chairs, who will be responsible for ensuring Panel concurrence;
- It is the Panel’s expectation that those who use the database will do so with respect for the process, bearing in mind the limitations of such a database, including the fact that at any given point in time, many of the recommendations will not fit exactly into only one status category and some status designations may not be entirely up to date. In other words, the database should not be treated as a precisely kept scorecard of performance but rather as a mechanism to ensure that nothing important ‘falls through the cracks’ and that progress is always being made towards full compliance with the WGWAP Terms of Reference.
