WHALES are to be given the same legal status as humans in a bid to stop their horrific slaughter.

A Maori king in New Zealand has signed a declaration with other tribal chiefs on Tahiti and the Cook Islands, The Times reports.

According to a local conservationist the move seeks to legally protect the rights of whales, which include “freedom of movement, cultural expression — which includes language — to a healthy environment, healthy oceans, and indeed the restoration of their populations”.

Commercial whaling was banned in 1986. However, Japan, Norway, and Iceland have killed nearly 40,000 large whales since then, according to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation charity.

Norway has actually recently increased the number of whales that can be legally hunted, the charity reports, while Japan has returned to commercial whaling.

Iceland continues to allow hunting under a ‘reservation’ scheme, but the number of tourists who try the meat on trips there has fallen to 12 per cent from around 40 per cent a decade ago in encouraging signs.

Conservations hope the move signed by the Maori king Te Arikinui Tuheitia Paki in Rarotonga last week will now be rubber-stamped by governments and made legally enforceable worldwide.

Lelei LeLaulu, chairman of the Earth Council Alliance, told Radio New Zealand: “This is a huge move and I think it will spur action in other parts of the world.

“Eastern Polynesians were guided to their current home islands by the whales. There’s a very strong spiritual and metaphysical tie to the whale.”

New Zealand has led the way in protecting the environment by awarding it human rights.

In 2014, it declared the North Island’s Te Urewera ranges to be the world’s first ecosystem with legal personhood. The law declared: “Te Urewera is a legal entity, and has all the rights, powers, duties and liabilities of a legal person.”

And in 2017 officials granted personhood status to the Whanganui River because of its importance to the native Maori people.