Manage Our Wolves Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DUFFY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Arkansas for his support in coming down and managing our time.

Mr. Speaker, this is a bill that is bipartisan in a time where I don't think we see a lot of bipartisanship. I think the reason you see Democrats and Republicans coming together and, actually, the House and the Senate coming together on this bill is because, if you live in the northern part of the United States in the Great Lakes and West, you understand that the wolves are a huge problem. That is why you have seen Democratic Senators from this region, Democratic Congressmen from this region, and Republicans standing together to say: Hey, listen, we have to manage these wolves.

If you live in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., it is not a problem. If you live in Madison, Wisconsin, it is not really a problem. You can make the argument that the pretty little puppy of the wolf, it is so pretty and beautiful and we have to protect it. Well, we did protect it. We put it on the endangered species list.

Like a lot of government programs, this one worked. We have protected them and allowed them to recover. We have three times as many gray wolves as was projected to be necessary to take them off the endangered species list.

We are coming to a hunting season in Wisconsin right now, so a lot of Wisconsinites put on their blaze orange and get their guns, and they go out to the woods and hunt deer.

Mr. Speaker, I have never seen a picture of Barack Obama in blaze orange and with his rifle going out to hunt deer. He is not a great outdoorsman, I don't think, but Barack Obama's administration was the one that first took the gray wolf off the endangered species list. And Donald Trump, too, agrees. Donald Trump and Barack Obama agreeing on an issue? They do on gray wolves.

You can say: I love the gray wolf. Protect it.

Does anybody like Bambi? Does anyone like Little Bear? Does anyone like your little pet--dogs? cats? cattle?

In our communities, here is a picture of one of our gray wolves. It is hard to tell on this picture, but that is a bear, and the bear is dead, by the way, because the wolf killed it.

Here is a picture from one of my farmers that shows one of his cattle that was attacked by a gray wolf. So what we are saying here is why can't we come together, acknowledge the success of a program, that the gray wolf has recovered, and then acknowledge that we should allow our States then to manage the gray wolf?

Some States might say: I want to allow the population to continue to grow. Other States might say: We want to manage it. So if you live in California, you might say: In California, we have a small population. We are going to let that little population thrive and grow. But if you live in Wisconsin, especially northern Wisconsin, you might say: It is necessary for us to actually manage this population because it is good for the environment; it is good for the wolves; it is good for the cattle. It is actually really good for our deer population.

So I think this just makes common sense.

And, by the way, some have come out and said--as I talked about on the floor, I am kind of a PETA guy. I want to protect animals. Well, protecting animals is allowing our States to successfully manage the wolf population, because if you do, you not only protect the wolf, but you protect the deer; you protect the cattle, the dogs, and the bear. Everyone gets protected when you have a balance to the ecosystem.

We are out of balance right now, and, frankly, I believe that our States are far more in tune in understanding the ecosystem of their State than bureaucrats in Washington. So I would far rather empower Wisconsin; and my good friend, Collin Peterson from Minnesota, let Minnesota manage those populations because they understand the ecosystem better.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage all of my colleagues to join Barack Obama and join Donald Trump and join a few Members of Congress from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Washington--and Senators as well--to allow us to successfully manage the gray wolf population which allows for a healthier ecosystem.

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