Japan Willing to Limit Illegal Whaling?

National Geographic is reporting that Japan may be willing to agree to a compromise that would allow the nation to hunt whale near its own homeland, ending the silly "scientific whaling" the nation has conducted in the Southern Hemisphere. The International Whaling Committee has been deadlocked for more than a decade with nations such as Australia and New Zealand opposing whaling while Japan and several smaller nations support it.

I don't think there is any doubt that the recent efforts of Greenpeace, and especially Sea Shepherd, to interrupt whaling activities as well as the Japanese whaler's response (kidnapping and the firing of live rounds), have played a major role in Japan's revised thinking.

Clearly, it would be much better if they ceases hunting whale completely. But, it is something.