HomeMy WebLinkAbout060326 email - Protection IslandALERT: BE CAUTIOUS This email originated outside the organization. Do not open attachments or click on links if you are not expecting them.
You are faced with a difficult choice between two issues you believe in: support the tribe or your refuge.
Protection Island is not just a National Wildlife Refuge, but one so fragile and significant to the whole region that closed access protects nests and burrows and an aquatic buffer zone
encircles the Island. Protection Island is essential to the health of the Salish Sea ecology.
Your compromise position of adding conditions to a letter of support is to be applauded. BUT any such conditions will likely not withstand the terms of a BIA Trust. Inherent in the Trust
is language exclusively for tribal interests (which include subsistence and commercial harvesting, economic development, reserving jobs created for tribal members, etc.). Ironically,
federal law instructs the BIA to go to the (toothless- if refuge status is removed) Fish and Wildlife Service for technical support as the BIA is neither staffed for nor the specialist
in wildlife issues.
The better, the best, compromise position already exists: the innovative cooperative management agreement with the USFWS, WDFW, and the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe that began less than
two years ago.
For such important resources and for posterity, I urge you all to take the long view for the future, imagine what might happen should a future fox guard the henhouse alone, and issue
a letter of NON SUPPORT for the Land Transfer in favor of joint administration under the USFWS.
Laura Walker
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