Earth Island Philippines Fights SLAPP Suit Over Anti-Captivity
Trixie Concepcion, Regional Director of the Earth Island Institute' Dolphin Safe Monitoring Project in the Philippines, and her staff monitor hundreds of tuna companies every year. As a team, they work to ensure that these companies adhere to international standards for Dolphin Safe tuna. But that is not all they do. Key players in the anti-captivity movement in the Philippines, Trixie, and her team actively lead protests and campaigns to free dolphins and whales from corporate tanks.
One of the companies they've challenged for keeping dolphins captive in tanks, Resorts World Sentosa, is fighting back with a lawsuit known in environmental circles as a SLAPP lawsuit. SLAPP stands for “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation,” and these suits are filed by corporations to intimidate and bankrupt small grassroots organizations and individuals that lawfully protest against corporate abuses. The Philippine courts have not been helpful, to say the least.
Trouble began in 2003 when outside dolphin brokers visited the Solomon Islands to capture, tame and train Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins for captivity and trade. In 2012, the International Marine Mammal Project (IMMP) of Earth Island Institute succeeded in convincing the Solomon Islands' government to ban captures and exports of wild dolphins for captivity.
Before the ban went into effect, the Solomon Islands exported 25 dolphins to a park in the Philippines. The Philippines office of Earth Island Institute protested the imports in meetings with the government, citing a report from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) that detailed how the Solomon Islands dolphin exports were unsustainable and harmful to local bottlenose populations. Even the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) Scientific Authorities in the Philippines disapproved of the dolphin imports. These protests were ignored by the Philippines government.
Within just a few months of their import to the Philippines, the dolphins were traded again to Resorts World Sentosa (RWS) in Singapore. Trixie, Earth Island, and several other local organizations went to court attempting to block the export of the dolphins to Singapore. The case named the Philippines Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, and Resorts World Sentosa. Despite the case, RWS imported the 25 dolphins from the Philippines to Singapore. Shortly after, RWS filed a SLAPP lawsuit against Trixie and Earth Island, asking for damages of about $90,000 US.
Earth Island and other groups filed a counter-lawsuit against RWS in spring 2013, asking for damages of $47,000 US.
The case has dragged on for years, with a decision against Earth Island in August 2019. The judge found Earth Island and other defendants guilty for moral and exemplary damages for filing the case in 2012 seeking to implement the Wildlife Act of the Philippines. According to the decision, petitioners Earth Island et al, “had no ground in instituting the instant petition…, thereby causing RWS to suffer embarrassment and besmirched reputation.”
The judge fined Earth Island Philippines $15,385 US.
Trixie, Earth Island, and their fellow organizations plan to appeal the case. They’ve done nothing wrong under Philippines law, and contend the problem continues to be corrupt judges in the Philippines. SLAPP lawsuits are illegal in the Philippines. To date, 4 of the 25 dolphins have died.
Many thanks to Trixie and her crew in the Philippines for standing up to safeguard dolphins and put an end to captivity. Please consider a donation to the legal fund for Earth Island Philippines. Please email savedolphinsph@gmail.com with a request to donate.
Learn more about our Earth Island Philippines office: http://www.earthislandph.org
We also encourage you to sign Earth Island Philippines' petition asking RWS to withdraw the lawsuit: