Whale Rescue a ‘Circus Act,’ Philip Chides

Conservation-minded Prince Philip today dismissed the costly rescue of two California gray whales trapped off northern Alaska as a “circus act” irrelevant to saving the species.

“It was, I think, in many ways counterproductive,” said Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II and president of the World Wide Fund for Nature.

The October rescue cost $1.3 million and grabbed worldwide attention.

“You have got to see it as a circus act or an act of entertainment. In that sense it was highly successful,” he said at a luncheon given by the Assn. of American Correspondents in London.

Philip, who travels widely to promote nature conservation, defended his interest in hunting.

He compared taking part in blood sports, a favorite pastime of the British Royal Family, to being a butcher selling meat.

“I don’t think doing it (killing animals) for money makes it any more moral. I don’t think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing,” said Philip, 67.

“It is really rather like saying it is perfectly all right to commit adultery--providing you don’t enjoy it,” he added.

On the rescue of the California gray whales, Philip complained that it gave people a false impression that “they are doing something about conservation of nature.”

“If they were both males, it would not have made a blind bit of difference,” he joked.

The whales were freed in a three-week multinational operation involving American scientists, Eskimos and two Soviet icebreakers. Newspapers, television and radio stations carried weeks of blow-by-blow accounts.

The whales, including one that disappeared and presumably died, became snared in pack ice, which halted their annual migration to their winter home off Mexico.

Philip said the vast resources devoted to rescuing the whales could have been used for “very much more positive things.”

He also noted that the gray whales as a species are vulnerable to being hunted by Eskimos.