Gluesenkamp Perez: “Today I rise to call on the family of the German Prinz zu Salm-Salm about their land holdings in my district. In…”

“Today I rise to call on the family of the German Prinz zu Salm-Salm about their land holdings in my district. In Wahkiakum County, Washington, our local hunters and fishermen are being squeezed out of the lands that they have hunted and fished on for generations, but not by wildfire or even by Federal and State regulations this time, but by German royalty who is buying up land and prohibiting public access to places that we have hunted and fished on for generations. It was reported last month that the German royals now control 7.3 percent of Wahkiakum County. Now, our local economies and way of life are at risk. I have been told by some in my community that frustrations are so high that without resolution there can only be a violent boiling point. The Pacific Northwest is no stranger to this kind of interference, but at the hands of a management company whose investors are halfway around the world, this shows that something has gone deeply wrong with how we think about and regulate land and local ownership. This cultural fabric of our community is ours--to live off the land, to invest back into it. Loyalty to place is grounding, a necessary practice in this fractured and polarized world. I call on the German royal family to engage with my constituents and revise their hunting access regulations.”