Re: Draft Puget Sound Salmon Recovery Plan
Shared Strategy for Puget Sound

February 22, 2006

Elizabeth Babcock
National Marine Fisheries Service
Salmon Recovery Division
7600 Sandpoint Way NE   
Seattle, WA 98115

Please enter this letter and it's attachments into the record of public comment on the Draft Puget Sound Recovery Plan prepared by the Shared Strategy and a NMFS supplement to the Shared Strategy Plan.

The Shared Strategy group, in promoting its plan as being developed by hundreds of grassroots stakeholders includes groups representing the interest of private property owners. Let it be known to all interested parties that the Kitsap Alliance of Property Owners (KAPO) does not endorse nor support this draft plan.

In the first place this draft plan is comprised of 4,000 plus pages. How could an average property owner possibly interpret and understand how this 4,000 plus page document will affect the constitutional use and enjoyment of their private property? How can anyone interpret, understand and knowledgeably comment on a 4,000 page document that they must read from a computer screen?

This draft document strongly supports the development and enforcement of local Critical Areas Ordinances, Countywide Planning Policies, Comprehensive plans, Surface & Stormwater management programs, etc. heavily laden with onerous land and development regulations driving up the costs and availability of housing opportunities.

This draft plan also violates Presidential Executive Order 13352 dated August 26, 2004 ensuring Cooperative Conservation among federal agencies and private property owners.

Our federal, state and local governments and public utility districts have spent billions of tax payer dollars on Salmon recovery; primarily dealing with habitat which is comprised mostly of private property. All the while our appetite for the Salmon "endangered species" is insatiable. Waiters proudly announce to diners the house specialty as "wild" Salmon. All the while we are "clubbing" wild as well as hatchery Salmon - "surplussing" - not allowing them to spawn - selling their eggs to satisfy foreign appetites and tossing their carcasses aside to rot.

All the while allowing ocean nets up to 30 miles long and hundreds of inland nets to decimate this precious resource not only through harvest but by-catch. All the while not only failing to manage dozens of Salmon predators but protecting them furthering the endangerment of Salmon. And the absurdity of expending even more taxpayer funds to protect the "endangered" Salmon predators. All the while exacting heavy tolls on taxpayers and private property owners for habitat while ignoring the fact that Salmon spend 85% of their lives at sea.

During this process science has been "created" and manipulated to serve agendas that have more to do with building empires, jobs and retirement plans and controlling private property than saving Salmon. The assault on "Salmon science" has created a cloud of doubt on all science that may never be overcome. Science no longer enjoys the respect it did only a few short years ago.

This letter and its attachments are so entered into the record.

Respectfully submitted,

Vivian Henderson
Executive Director
P.O. Box 1861
Poulsbo, WA 98370

Attachments itemized and included herewith

Attachments:
1. Letter dated February 17, 2006 to County Commissioner Patty Lent denouncing any interest or support of the Shared Strategy process.
2. North Pacific Research "Saving Salmon" Interim Report Rev. 7.00
3. Salmon Update, August 2005 from Senator Bob Morton 7th District, WA State
4. "The Great Salmon Hoax" by James L. Buchal http://www.buchal.com/hoax.html

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