Manage Our Wolves Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1142, I call up the bill (H.R. 6784) to provide for removal of the gray wolf in the contiguous 48 States from the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife published under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
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Mr. Speaker, this bipartisan bill would accomplish what multiple administrations have been attempting to do for over a decade by delisting a species the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has deemed recovered under the Endangered Species Act. It also empowers the States to take a larger role in managing the species population.
The gray wolf has been protected in its original habitat in the western Great Lakes region under the Endangered Species Act since 1974. Beginning in 1994, the Federal Government began introducing species to the Western U.S. by relocating wolves from Canada and releasing them in Western States.
The reintroduced wolf population in the West expanded more quickly than many had anticipated, and as a result, Western States began to work with the Fish and Wildlife Service to better manage the species. This successful State and Federal cooperation led to the Fish and Wildlife Service's first attempt to delist the species under the Endangered Species Act in 2009. Litigation activists struck back, challenging the agency's delisting decision and halting further agency action at that time.
In 2014, the Fish and Wildlife Service, after noting an even greater increase in species population, attempted to once again delist the gray wolf. Just as before, litigants immediately challenged the agency's decision. That same year, gray wolves in Wyoming and the western Great Lakes region were relisted by court order, citing inadequate State management plans. This 2014 order was appealed, and in March of last year, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the relisting decision for the gray wolf, but in Wyoming only.
This underscores the extent to which the Fish and Wildlife Service has been hamstrung in implementing the objectives of the Endangered Species Act. Rather than spending its limited resources protecting vulnerable species, litigation activists have forced the agency to continuously defend every action.
In this case, despite scientific evidence collected under multiple administrations from both sides of the aisle showing that the gray wolf populations have recovered and thrived, the agency remains bogged down in costly, never-ending litigation. We should be celebrating this ESA victory instead of moving on to the next challenge.
This bill would prevent the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from wasting further resources in responding to environmental lawfare by affirming its previous rules to delist the gray wolf and shielding these rules from further review.
Finally, the bill seeks to empower the States to manage their individual gray wolf populations by directing the Secretary of the Interior to issue a rule to delist the gray wolf in each of the 48 contiguous States and the District of Columbia. To ensure that States are provided certainty when developing State management plans, this bill would also exempt the delisting system from judicial review.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I would just say that the Endangered Species Act delisting a species is based on science, and the science has proven that this species is recovered. Twice under the previous administration, Fish and Wildlife tried to delist the species based on the science.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am glad that the gentleman from Oregon is so passionate about wolves, and this bill would be fantastic for him and his State.
It would allow their State natural resources folks to manage their wolves. They could release some in Portland. They could let those wolf populations get as large as they want to get. But the scientists at U.S. Fish and Wildlife have said that the species is recovered, and we are talking about letting other States have the opportunity to manage those wolf populations in their States.
I wish we were doing a farm bill. I wish the Senate would do a farm bill, because we have already done one out of here.
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Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot about letting scientists make the decision, not letting others make the decision. But right now, courts are making the decision on the delisting of this wolf.
We have heard testimony that, even though it is a bipartisan bill, even though it was people in the previous administration that first suggested delisting the wolf, we have heard testimony that if you support delisting the wolf, you must be an idiot.
I don't think supporting this legislation means you are an idiot or you are trying to message something. I think it means that we want to see science implemented. I think it means that we want to let the scientists do their jobs.
Mention has been made about Yellowstone National Park. I was actually in Yellowstone National Park this last summer and talked to scientists out there about the big fire in the 1980s.
What many of us know about fire is that it is a natural occurring phenomena, and it mimicked a huge clear-cut in Yellowstone National Park. After the fire and all this vegetation started growing back, we saw a huge increase in elk and deer herds, and the wolf population increased right along with that.
As a matter of fact, the scientists at the park told me that the greatest numbers of elk that they have had happened within about 10 years after the big fire out there. The greatest population of wolves that they had happened after that. Now that the forest is growing back, that ecosystem, that forest will burn again--it burns about every 100 years--but the science is being applied here.
We just want to let States make the decisions on how to manage these wolves that the scientists have said are recovered and need to be delisted.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I have no additional speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
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