S-3596.1 _______________________________________________
SENATE JOINT MEMORIAL 8027
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State of Washington 52nd Legislature 1992 Regular Session
By Senators McDonald, Snyder, Amondson, Owen, Anderson and Barr
Read first time 01/28/92. Referred to Committee on Environment & Natural Resources.
TO THE HONORABLE GEORGE BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, AND TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE AND THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AND TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED:
We, your Memorialists, the Senate and House of Representatives of the State of Washington, in legislative session assembled, respectfully represent and petition as follows:
WHEREAS, The Endangered Species Act is before the Congress for reauthorization in 1992; and
WHEREAS, This Memorial is designed, especially in its initial phases, to emphasize exclusively the biological needs of threatened or endangered species; and
WHEREAS, The lack of consideration given to the social consequences of meeting these biological needs leads to policies that focus too greatly on the animal or plant under review, and not on the humans who are asked to sacrifice on behalf of that plant or animal; and
WHEREAS, The Northern Spotted Owl and the Columbia River Sockeye Salmon are both in the process of receiving special protection under the Endangered Species Act, decisions that have already had far reaching consequences over much of the State of Washington; and
WHEREAS, The experience in Washington state with the Northern Spotted Owl has been a public policy disaster, leading to the unemployment of tens of thousands of people whose livelihoods and dreams were given far less consideration than was the bird being protected, leading in some cases to the economic devastation of entire communities; and
WHEREAS, Many rightly fear that those who fish, those who farm, those who own property, and those who rely on electricity are all similarly threatened with disaster by the Columbia River Sockeye Salmon listing now under way; and
WHEREAS, It is distinctly unfair for federal policymakers to set a national goal to save species and then ask that only certain people bear the price of that goal through their loss of employment and their private property;
NOW, THEREFORE, Your Memorialists respectfully pray that during consideration of reauthorization of the Endangered Species Act, the Congress and the President work to modify that Act so as to:
(1) Ensure that humans are given at least equal consideration to the development of plans to save listed species;
(2) Require a separate, true, and complete accounting of the total human, social, and economic costs of saving each listed plant or animal, to be completed by an agency of the federal government apart from that charged with protecting the species, and prepared in close cooperation with state and local governments located in the affected area; and
(3) Ensure that the entire nation bear the costs of saving a species deemed worthy of special protection, not just those persons or state and local governments who exist nearby.
BE IT RESOLVED, That copies of this Memorial be immediately transmitted to the Honorable George Bush, President of the United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and to each member of Congress from the State of Washington.