Elizabeth Furse: “there are so many bad cuts in this bill that I do not have time to talk about all of them. I am going to talk about the…”

“there are so many bad cuts in this bill that I do not have time to talk about all of them. I am going to talk about the ones that matter the most to me. Those are the attacks on our endangered salmon. This bill, makes no mistake about it, is an attack on environmental protection and the Endangered Species Act. First, it slashes funding for pre-listing activities and habitat acquisition. Why is that a bad idea? Because we want to pre-list species before they reach the point where they need listing. We want to buy habitat so that we do not impact private landowners. Second, this bill terminates all funding for listing activities. We are simply putting our heads in the sand if we think that just because we do not list a species, it is not going extinct. That is ridiculous. We have got to list these species. The reality of species decline will simply require more money and more drastic measures down the line to stop the extinction of species. Finally, Mr. Chairman, this bill terminates 3 vital initiatives to protect fisheries habitat in the Northwest: PACFISH, INFISH and the Upper Columbia Basin Assessment. Why are those important? Because they are designed to ensure that the activities in the woods do not impact our vital fishery interests. On the West Coast, we are trying very, very hard, we have spent millions of dollars to restore our salmon industry. In 1988, these salmon contributed about $1 billion and 60,000 jobs to our region.”