Mammoth Bill May Be Extinct For This Year

Tue., March 10, 1998

Associated Press

They built a grassroots network of support across Washington state.

They traveled to Olympia to lobby for their cause. And they even tried appealing to the highest levels of state government.

But after four years, the pupils at Windsor Elementary School near Cheney still cannot persuade the Legislature to pass a bill making the Columbian mammoth the official state fossil.

This session, there appeared to be hope when the bill passed the House 89-0.

However, the Senate failed to bring up House Bill 1088 for a vote last week, and prospects appear bleak as the Legislature wraps up business before Thursday’s scheduled adjournment.

The students who started their efforts as a class project in teacher Sara Jane Aebly’s second-grade class four years ago, had high hopes for the bill, which would have given the woolly creature a place in Washington state annals next to the state’s official flower, the rhododendron, and its official bird, the goldfinch.

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