Animal Wellness Action Endorses Hilary Franz for 6th Congressional District in Washington State Democratic Primary

Franz is a strong, proven leader in managing public lands and is dedicated to wildlife

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES, July 30, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Animal Wellness Action endorses Democrat Hilary Franz to win her primary election, in her bid to represent the 6th Congressional District in Washington State. Franz is Commissioner of Public Lands for Washington state, and the Democratic primary takes place Aug. 6. The organization makes the endorsement based on her leadership of animal welfare concerns.

As the two-term Commissioner of Public Lands for Washington state, Franz manages 3 million acres of lands and is a strong leader in the fight to oppose the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s plan to protect a small number of spotted owls by killing an estimated 450,000 barred owls over several decades. Franz is the most senior official in the range states of California, Oregon, or Washington to demand that this kill plan be halted.

“As Washington’s chief custodian of public lands, Animal Wellness Action applauds Hilary Franz for criticizing an unworkable and costly plan to massacre 450,000 barred owls in the Pacific Northwest,” explained Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. “The federal government should not be deploying hundreds of millions of dollars on a program to conduct the largest raptor slaughter ever contemplated in any nation. There’s just no way it can work, and that will make the plan not only inhumane but wasteful and ill-conceived.”

Animal Wellness Action helped lead a sign-on letter with 150 organizations to U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland with concerns about the impracticality of the plan, its price tag of nearly a quarter-billion dollars, and their moral concerns about amassing an enormous body count of a look-alike species protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act as a North American native species.

Animal Wellness Action applauded Franz as she raised public concerns about the federal agency’s forest-owl kill plan.

“I don’t believe that a multiple decades-long plan to kill nearly half-a-million barred owls across 14 million acres of land represents a solution that is absolutely viable, affordable or capable Secretary Haaland in fact it raises an enormous amount of questions,” said Hilary Franz in a video presentation on the subject. “How can we prevent the surviving barred owls from simply recolonizing and repopulating the very areas we are trying to preserve? I think we can do better, and we have too many questions that need to be answered.” The video of the complete statement by Commissioner Franz can be viewed here and her letter is posted here.

Animal Wellness Action notes that Franz has demonstrated a broader commitment to animal welfare than just protecting the owls living in the Pacific Northwest.

• Franz banned all aquatic net-pens (fish farms) from Washington’s waters, reasoning that these net pens pose threats to native fish and aquatic habitat.

• Franz supports the FIGHT Act (to combat animal fighting), the SAFE Act (to ban horse slaughter), a ban on mink farming, and a wide range of policies at the federal level to help animals.

• Franz is committed to opposing factory farming and promoting more humane and sustainable agriculture.

The USFWS’s Final EIS suffers from several defects which make it susceptible to a legal challenge, wellness groups say.

ABOUT
Animal Wellness Action is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(4) whose mission is to help animals by promoting laws and regulations at federal, state and local levels that forbid cruelty to all animals. The group also works to enforce existing anti-cruelty and wildlife protection laws. Animal Wellness Action believes helping animals helps us all. X: @AWAction_News

WAYNE PACELLE
ANIMAL WELLNESS ACTION
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