Senator Murray Includes Critical Investment for Salmon Restoration

(Washington D.C.) – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member
of the Senate Appropriations Committee, announced that she included $80 million
for the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund (PCSRF) in the Fiscal Year 2011
Senate Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) Appropriations Bill that was
approved by the CJS Subcommittee. The funds will be used to support state,
local, and tribal programs that help improve salmon habitats and restore the
salmon population to healthy, harvestable levels.

“In
Washington state, investing in a sustainable salmon population is incredibly
important. It’s important to the economic, historic, cultural, and recreational
identity of our state,” said
Senator Murray. “This
funding will continue to support projects that boost our local economies,
create good paying jobs, and restore and protect salmon habitats.”

Last
year, Senator Murray led
a successful bi-partisan effort with Senator Cantwell and 28 Senators and
Representatives to save the Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Program from
potentially devastating cuts after the Administration proposed eliminating it
in their original budget request.

The
Pacific Coastal Salmon Recovery Fund (PCSRF) helps restore endangered and
listed stocks of Pacific salmon through the improvement and expansion of salmon
habitats. It also supplements existing state, tribal and local programs that
foster partnerships in salmon and steelhead recovery and conservation. The
PCSRF generates hundreds of jobs in Washington state, and every dollar of
federal funding has resulted in two dollars being leveraged in local
communities. 

In
Washington state, the PCSRF works through of the Salmon Recovery Funding Board,
which has provided over 900 competitive grants to Washington state projects
since 2000.