Manage Our Wolves Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill for a number of reasons, but I would specifically like to address how the bill undermines science.

Congress enacted the ESA to conserve and protect endangered and threatened species and their habitats in the U.S. and abroad. Congress also recognized that scientists, not Members of Congress--even me, ones like me with political science degrees--scientists have the necessary expertise to make decisions about species' protection. So the ESA requires that the Fish and Wildlife Service make the decisions regarding species listing and delisting. The law entrusts the Service's scientists to determine what is best for imperiled species, such as the gray wolf, using the best available science.

The ESA is credited as being one of the most science-based laws on the books, but this bill completely eliminates scientists from the decisionmaking process. It mandates that all gray wolves be removed from the ESA in the lower 48. In doing so, it short-circuits the law's science-based process that determines when species have recovered and when protections are appropriately removed.

Despite years of Republican efforts to ignore the science behind the ESA, we know it has been a huge success. Ninety-nine percent of listed species have continued to survive, and 90 percent are on schedule to meet their recovery goals. So we should be working to make the gray wolf another one of those ESA success stories, not eliminating the protections that have helped put it on a path to recovery.

When the gray wolf was listed in the early 1970s, there were only a few hundred left in the wild. Since then, scientists have shown that the reintroduction of gray wolves in the Northern Rockies has been a huge ecological and economic success. I was able to see gray wolves in Yellowstone with Mr. Beyer and Mr. DeFazio earlier this year and to see the ecosystem that has rebounded since their reintroduction.

We are on the right track, but science shows that ESA protection is still needed. Currently, these wolves occupy only 5 percent of their historic range and only 36 percent of their suitable habitat. So while it is encouraging that the wolves are recovering and even coming into California for the first time in 90 years, a handful of these animals hardly shows that it is time for them to be delisted.

Instead of enacting a new law to eliminate protections, we ought to be working with landowners, local and State agencies, and others to prevent conflicts so that we and wolves can both thrive.

I would like to point out that if American citizens believe an agency does not follow the letter of the law, under the ESA, they have the right to hold the government accountable in court. It is part of the system of checks and balances that must be protected.

Politically driven, species-specific legislation like this sets a dangerous precedent for delisting. It opens the door to future partisan attacks on vulnerable species. Legislative delisting measures like this one undermine the scientific process fundamental to the success of the Endangered Species Act. Scientists, not Congress, should make these decisions.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

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