Grizzly Bear State Management Act of 2023

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on the topic of my Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, you probably didn't know this, but 50 years ago, President Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law, which was designed to do two very important things: Prevent species from going extinct and promoting their recovery.

Mr. Speaker, since then, hundreds of plants and animals have joined the endangered or threatened species list, spurring conservation and recovery efforts at all levels of government. While well-intentioned, this law, unfortunately, has been abused and twisted so much that it doesn't even begin to achieve its goals. In short, it is a failure.

Although there have been some successes in the past 50 years, only 72 of the 1,389 listed species have been recovered and removed from the list. That is a 5 percent success rate. Only in the Federal Government would anyone consider 5 percent a passing grade.

The Congressional Western Caucus has long advocated for improvements to modernize the ESA and make it more effective for our species and more transparent for the American people.

We have advocated on behalf of the rural communities that we represent

who are severely impacted by ESA listing decisions and who, in many cases, are working in collaboration with private landowners, community groups, tribes, local governments to promote successful species recovery and land conservation. We have advocated to administration after administration to follow the science and fulfill the congressional intent of the law which is to promote recovery of these species and remove them from the endangered species list.

That is why I am really proud, Mr. Speaker, to host this Special Order tonight where you will hear from my Western Caucus colleagues about successful, locally-led recovery efforts that are taking place across this country, about the need for conservation, not just preservation, of our species, the different impacts that ESA listing decisions have on local communities and economies, and some of the legislative reforms that are needed to finally bring the ESA into the 21st century.

As we have seen over the past 50 years, ESA has become a weapon used by extreme environmentalists and by serial litigators to slow or halt critical economic development and land management projects in rural communities throughout the United States.

From preventing the restoration of our forests to creating excessively burdensome roadblocks to domestic energy development, the ESA used in this way actually can do more harm than good.

These combative environmental groups use the ESA to drive a political wedge to achieve their true ambition, the end of ranching, the end of resource development, and the end of timber harvest on public lands. It is not just a western or a public lands issue.

There are approximately 1.3 billion acres of private land in the United States and 926 of the currently listed species are on those private lands, which means cooperation with these communities and these landowners is essential. It is crucial for recovery.

Unfortunately, ESA regulations often negatively affect the very people we need as conservation partners through land use restrictions, through reduced property values, and costly permitting requirements. In effect, the law literally makes enemies out of the people most critical to the species recovery.

We must empower our local, our State, and our Tribal partners to collaborate on comprehensive recovery and conservation efforts, and we understand more stringent regulations will not lead to more successful species recovery.

In rural America, we value the responsible management of species, but we have to do so in a way that does not destroy our economies, that does not decimate our lands, or leave our communities vulnerable to natural disasters.

We need flexible tools, not tools that are one-size-fits-all regulations that come out of the Federal Government, to be successful in our shared goal of recovery of our Nation's endangered species and threatened species.

Tonight, as we always do, we are here to raise the voices of rural communities across this country, and tonight we are focused on those voices that are telling us how they have been impacted by the ESA and make their message heard.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Baird).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for relating some of the impacts that he sees in his State. You don't have to be in the Western United States to be negatively impacted by some of the things that are in the ESA that need updating. I thank him for relating that.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Tiffany), one of the vice chairs of the Western Caucus, a gentleman that represents another Midwestern State. I thank him for being here tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Tiffany. You are absolutely right. In the ESA there have been some success stories and we need to learn to celebrate them. More important, the resources that are being used in successfully recovering those species could then be turned to other resources that desperately need the help.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Valadao), one of the young Members of the House of Representatives and a friend of mine.

Mr. Speaker, he had to go there. I thank Mr. Valadao for his words. Sometimes going off script is dangerous at times, but I think he made a really good point about right now in California, there is an abundance of water, so much so that some communities are flooding.

If we could just store that water, then we would not have to idle all of that farmland that I hear is being set aside because there is not enough water to irrigate. Communities wouldn't be struggling. We need the food that California produces as a country. That is important to us. These are the things that are not just affecting people in California but the whole country.

Mr. Speaker, I think Mr. Valadao's time has expired, but he makes some really good points, and I appreciate that. Since he is a young man, I am always amazed at how much he has picked up in a short amount of time here.

Next, I turn to someone that has really impressed with her knowledge of natural resource issues, not just in her home State but throughout the country.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Ms. Hageman).

Mr. Speaker, I couldn't have said it better. Resources are being used to keep the species on the list indefinitely.

We should be thinking about the good of the species and the success of the recovery of the species. Instead, we want to keep them on this list to be used for other reasons. That is what we have to get to the bottom of.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Westerman). He is a dear friend. He is someone who came into Congress with me and has risen to the chair of the Natural Resources Committee and is doing just a great job. He is one of my star members of the Western Caucus.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Westerman for his remarks.

How appropriate it is to look at the original language, the intent, to illustrate how far we have strayed from that mission. I thank Chairman Westerman for those great words.

Next, Mr. Speaker, I turn to somebody who I visited in his district, and I think he knows firsthand just to what extent the ESA has been weaponized to stop some of the things that, as a country, we have to accomplish.

Mr. Stauber from the great State of Minnesota happens to be one of the vice chairmen of the Congressional Western Caucus. I would love to hear what the gentleman has to say about this.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the State of Minnesota (Mr. Stauber).

I couldn't agree more that the gray wolf in my State has recovered, as well. They are prolific animals. They are flexible. They are nomadic. We really should declare a victory that they have recovered and celebrate that success and then use those resources to focus on other species that need our attention.

I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson), the chairman of the Committee on Agriculture and someone that knows, from his perspective, not only a lot about agriculture but a lot about the Endangered Species Act.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Thompson for elevating the voices of the people of Pennsylvania on this important issue.

He is right. The conservation programs that we have in this country have done a lot of good for species across the country.

That is why he is the chairman of the Agriculture Committee because he understands things like that.

That too. We all do once in a while.

I yield to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Mann), a great agricultural State, and a beautiful district that I have visited.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Mann and appreciate his pointing out how important it is to listen to people in the local area who understand the environment, the climate that they live in, and that often they are earning their living by farming.

We have heard from several different parts of the country represented here with the different Members of Congress. So, I am going back to the great State of California to another one of the Western Caucus vice chairs, someone that is very outspoken on these issues, and has tremendous background and knowledge on the Endangered Species Act.

I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa), for being part of this conversation and also elevating the voices of the people he represents.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. LaMalfa is correct, there are a lot of things that we should talk about. We have a limited amount of time, but he is very good at expressing the needs of the people that he represents and making sure that people understand.

Mr. Speaker, in summation, as you have heard tonight, the Endangered Species Act, signed into law 50 years ago--and I think you probably picked this up--was designed to do two things: It was designed to prevent the species from going extinct and to promote its recovery. We need to return to that mission. We need to work with landowners and local governments, Tribes, and always keep the well- being of the species in mind in that work.

Mr. Speaker, we also need to be transparent for the American people. There is just too much at stake for us not to be. As members of the Congressional Western Caucus, we are going to continue to elevate the voice of the people of rural America on important issues like the Endangered Species Act and so many others.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, it is really a pleasure to serve with Chairman Newhouse on the Western Caucus as well as in other capacities here in the U.S. House.

Indeed, he has really invigorated the effort that the caucus is making on having these key issues on all manner of things, not just western but really, for the whole country, having so much to do with resources and such.

As we contemplate here tonight what the Endangered Species Act's original intention 50 years ago was when passed by Congress, and really, for those of us in production, agriculture, energy, minerals, just about anything that uses the basic building blocks of the economy and the things that our modern society needs, the Endangered Species Act has been weaponized against that.

What it has turned into now due to activism in the courts, the endless lawsuits and the way the courts reinterpret things is nothing close to what Congress would have passed back in the early 1970s.

Had they passed that, I think they would have been ridden out of town on a rail because it was so destructive toward the cornerstones of our economy and what has made America strong and independent in so many areas.

We agree with the purpose originally. It is to protect and recover vulnerable species. I think the focus at the time, really, was on the bald eagle with expansion from there to many other species that we deem valuable.

The world has well over a million species in it, and they are discovering more all the time; a lot of it in the insect world and such.

To think that we are going to just completely move all human beings, especially Americans, into caves or something like that and say we can't affect the environment or touch it in any way is really unrealistic. Mankind has a piece in the world as well. That is even a biblical truth.

The Endangered Species Act, what it has turned into, is really harming the ability for people to get what they need.

Also, the focus hasn't really been on recovering species, which I think was well intended, because we have heard my colleagues talk about the ratio here of recovery. It is extremely low, especially if you put a ratio of dollars spent and pain inflicted on agriculture, on mining, on domestically produced products versus the number of species recovered. It is way out of whack.

You heard my colleague from Minnesota a minute ago talking about the recovery of the wolves. They have an incredible number of wolves in the upper Midwest, but the ESA can be misinterpreted and misused and abused to say we need to have wolves everywhere: in Oregon, in California, in Washington.

For that matter, should we introduce them into the Golden Gate Park and the Santa Monica Pier to make sure they have their share as well?

If you want to see a wolf, you are still going to be able to see a wolf in the areas where they have been more indigenous for a long time, and they have successfully recovered.

This is what we put up with. They introduce them in areas where now livestock and people making a living in rural areas in Wyoming, Montana, northeast California, and Oregon have to suffer with the ideology of just introducing them everywhere and saying this is now going to make them not on the list anymore.

In my northern California area, for example, we had very important levee projects needed to be done for flood control around the north central area of Sacramento Valley, places like Hamilton City, Yuba City, Marysville, Sacramento, areas like that.

Well, they seemed to shop for a species du jour to stop projects, and what they settled on was the valley elderberry longhorn beetle, which not that many years ago U.S. Fish and Wildlife actually recommended for it to be delisted. In the meantime, however, they won't make a decision and take it off the list.

Now, mind you, you don't even find the beetle in some of these areas, but because the habitat for it exists in some of these areas, the law has been interpreted to be, well, if there is habitat there, if there is an elderberry bush and a beetle might come along and land in it or dwell in it, we have to leave that bush there. If you take that bush out in order to redo a levee, then we have to plant 50 or 70 more bushes somewhere else.

In one case here, we had to take out a couple hundred acres of orchard land

to have this mitigation area because they wanted to fix the dang levee that was already in existence and keep a town from flooding at the next rain because they are not maintaining the river in between the levee banks from all the siltation and such going on there. But that starts another whole narrative.

The beetle doesn't get delisted, and the levee work doesn't get done farther south in the Yuba City-Marysville area. This was going on 20, 30 years ago. A lot of great work has been done since then, but it has been made much more expensive and much more arduous because of the threat of lawsuit and the ESA.

I will remind you that years ago lives were lost and hundreds of millions of dollars of damage were done by a levee blowing out in that southern area of my district in Yuba City-Marysville on the Marysville side. With all that damage, three lives were lost, and finally the State of California lost a lawsuit for, I think, $400 million because they were derelict in doing the work to maintain the levees, all because of this.

What I am talking about here as well is the ability to keep food on the table. This chart I have shows that California is responsible for, in some of these crops, 100 percent, well above 90 percent of the crops that Americans consume that come primarily from California.

We have the ESA stopping us from keeping farmland safe from floods but, also, at the same time building the water storage projects that are important to store water. Now, we were blessed this year with a tremendous amount of rain and snowpack, and we are really happy about it, but that doesn't happen every year. That is why we build these long-term water projects that store water for 5 years of drought, like Shasta Lake, Lake Oroville, and others. If we don't have those projects, we don't ride through that time.

They try to stop those projects from being further built, and they also seek to tear down projects like the Klamath dams, make hydroelectric green power with no CO2. Much work needs to be done to keep crops on the table, to keep the electricity and the wires, keep the minerals coming to produce all the things we need to keep energy, all of that. The ESA needs to be revisited and actually focused on truly recovering species but not used as a weapon to stop things people need, our economies need, rural economies especially. That is some of the work we do in the Western Caucus.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate, again, Chairman Newhouse's leadership on this and the opportunity to speak on it here tonight. There is much more that I could say; you know me.

Mr. Speaker, I am a farmer in my real life. I hope I talk plainly enough to get my thoughts across.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Newhouse not only for his leadership here tonight in setting up the Special Order but also his leadership on the Western Caucus, which is a voice for us on not just Western issues but rural issues all across the country. I am honored to be a part of the Western Caucus even though I reside in Arkansas, which I do say at one time was the Western frontier.

Over its 50-year life, as has been discussed, ESA has gone from being a law geared toward recovering at-risk species through conservation and has now become a weapon to control land and activities through a misguided concept of preservation.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important that we take a minute here and look at the difference between conservation and preservation.

Conservation, which the Endangered Species Act was built around, is the idea of being a good steward of the resources we have, of taking care of and tending to the habitat of these endangered species. It really is like being the gardener of the habitat.

Preservation is this idea that you can preserve something in the natural world, and you really can't do that. The way you preserve something that is living, Mr. Speaker, is, for instance, take a cucumber. You boil it in vinegar, and you preserve it as a pickle.

Mr. Speaker, what I want to say tonight is that conservation is for critters; preservation is for pickles. The Endangered Species Act, as it was written in 1973, was about conservation and taking care of these at-risk species.

I went back to the Endangered Species Act of 1973, and I want to read here what the people who came before us set forth in Congress in the findings of the Endangered Species Act.

The very first finding was that ``various species of fish, wildlife, and plants in the United States have been rendered extinct as a consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation.''

They pulled that out in the very first of their findings.

It goes on to say: ``The United States has pledged itself as a sovereign state in the international community to conserve to the extent practicable the various species of fish or wildlife and plants facing extinction.''

Then look at the purpose of the Endangered Species Act, Mr. Speaker, and I quote directly here: ``The purposes of this chapter are to provide a means whereby the ecosystems upon which endangered species and threatened species depend may be conserved, to provide a program for the conservation of such endangered species and threatened species, and to take such steps as may be appropriate to achieve the purposes of the treaties and conventions set forth in subsection (a) of this section.''

Our men and women who came before us knew that protecting endangered species was all about conservation.

The Endangered Species Act was actually passed as a call to action and conservation, but it has devolved into a weapon for stagnation and leverage for political activism.

The irony is that a misused ESA actually does more harm than good to the animals and plants that it was put in place to protect.

As chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, I have four guiding principles that form my priorities, and they are access, conservation, innovation, and transparency. In my view, the ESA falls short of all four.

The ESA often denies access to our public lands and negatively impacts private property rights. The ESA denies access.

The ESA fails at conservation, as has been mentioned many times here, as only a miniscule--less than 5 percent--of listed species have ever been delisted. It has already been brought out that the Endangered Species Act is a modern-day example of the ``Hotel California.'' ``You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.''

In addition, the act disincentivizes innovation and private investment while at the same time lacks transparency.

We have cases of private landowners who are doing conservation and trying to take the actions necessary to help the habitat for species, and when those species get listed, it is always: ``Hands off. Don't touch it. We are going to preserve it.'' That just doesn't work, and it is not ever going to work. The example is in the dismal recovery rate the way the ESA is being implemented.

We have made reforming the ESA a major part of the committee's business. If we wish to truly help threatened and endangered species, then we must strongly support science-based habitat management, and we cannot tolerate the weaponization of the ESA for political activism.

So far this Congress, the Natural Resources Committee has held two legislative hearings on bills that address

fundamental flaws with how the ESA is being implemented. These bills include three Congressional Review Act resolutions designed to provide oversight of Biden administration rulemakings that represent the true excesses of the ESA. Each of these CRA resolutions has been passed by the U.S. Senate on a bipartisan base.

In addition, three other bills heard by the committee deal with species that have long been recovered, the grizzly bear and the gray wolf, as have been mentioned. These species have been prevented from being delisted due to persistent litigation by activist groups. Even with Republican and Democratic administrations saying these species have been recovered, they are still on the list.

Following these hearings, the committee held a markup on April 27 that resulted in all six bills being reported favorably by the committee. I ask all of my colleagues to join in supporting these measures.

This is just the beginning. This Congress and the Natural Resources Committee will bring forth policies that promote transparency, science- based decisionmaking, flexibility, and voluntary conservation within the ESA.

It is my desire to have a hearing and, hopefully, a bipartisan markup on legislation to allow the restoration of America's wildlife habitat. Focusing on wildlife habitat restoration is definitely the ounce of prevention worth many pounds of cure when it comes to species recovery.

I look forward to working in partnership with Chairman Newhouse and the Western Caucus to ensure that we continue to move the ball forward on bringing much-needed reform to the ESA. It has not been reauthorized in 50 years. Maybe we need to rewrite it and put it up for reauthorization.

Again, Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman so much for his leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, the Endangered Species Act was a well-intentioned effort to protect the species we are at risk of losing. Unfortunately, the ESA has been hijacked by extreme environmentalists who have weaponized the law, especially in California.

Central Valley families and farmers have seen the negative impacts of heavy-handed and misguided regulations that put fish ahead of our families and our farms.

During dry years, the very limited amount of water available is consistently flushed out to the ocean to protect the delta smelt and other endangered species.

While this precious resource was going out to the Pacific, thousands of acres of farmland were fallowed. This has devastating consequences for the people I represent and the livelihoods that depend on agriculture.

This is something that is important for us to address and talk a little bit about, because when the water goes out to the ocean, obviously we are not taking any of that surface water, and it has an impact on our below-ground water and our aquifers.

These past few years, we have had a huge number of wells fail. In agriculture, you drive around the countryside, and I know a lot of people at home probably see this, where you will see wells pulled out of the ground, the pipes stacked, and they clean them. Two days ago, I was driving around the valley, and there was a situation where there was a pile of sand around this well, and it was obvious the well had failed.

What is really devastating is I have communities all across the valley, and in just working with one nonprofit, there were at least 2,000, either homes or communities, where they had actual tanks put in because the wells had failed and there was going to be no clean water for these people at home, so they put in tanks and pumps, and they were trucking water to these people so they could have water in their faucets.

This was happening all across the valley. When we talk about the devastating impact it has on our communities, this was something that was at their faucets. It was really frustrating these past few years when you talk to folks and we have to say, well, we can build projects, but we can't build water infrastructure projects. We have had projects that they have been working on for the last 30 years, a simple expansion of an existing well or existing reservoir. We have got a reservoir, like Sites Reservoir, they have been talking about for six decades and have never been able to break ground on that.

When out talking to folks around the district, farmworkers specifically in some of these communities that struggle most with these wells, the conversation they brought up was they can expedite the permitting process for a project like the high-speed rail and you see the project being built, but they can't do anything for water infrastructure.

It is frustrating because a lot of these folks rely on agriculture to make ends meet. Then they go out and see fields being fallowed, they see the land pulled out of production, and it is less work for them, less ability for them to provide for their families. This is something that should be an easy one, but it is regulations like the ESA that put us at such a disadvantage.

Back to my script.

To add insult to injury, many of the actions taken to protect these fish have not been effective. The population of many of our listed species, including the delta smelt, are now worse off than they were before.

Then you look at the situation we find ourselves in today. Whole communities are on the verge of being under water because environmental regulations have prevented these same reservoirs, that we desperately need, from being built that would actually help us prevent some of the flooding that we are dealing with.

Now, we have more than enough water to provide our farms, communities, and homes with water for years to come and nowhere to store it.

Indefinite listing of species allows activists to abuse the ESA, preventing the construction of critical water storage projects and resulting in millions of acre-feet of water being flushed out to the Pacific Ocean.

The needs of the Central Valley are consistently put last, thanks to the abuse of environmental regulations like the ESA. We must work together to reform the Endangered Species Act to strike a more reasonable balance between protecting our environment and common sense.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I thank the junior member of the Appropriations Committee and chairman of the Western Caucus, Mr. Newhouse.

Mr. Speaker, I know the gentleman from Washington probably knows this, but it is important to highlight the fact that California is the number one agriculture State in the country.

Mr. Speaker, this week the Endangered Species Act turns 50. It is an act that was initially created to ensure the health of fish, wildlife, and vegetation and to protect species that are either threatened or endangered as defined by the act.

The fact is that the Endangered Species Act would and could work if it were implemented as intended--to recover actually threatened or endangered species. It has instead become a business in and of itself, with an entire economy built around endless studies, monitoring, fieldwork, and lawsuits. Bureaucrats spend their entire careers trying to prevent species from being delisted--as to keep them on the list ensures job security.

The Endangered Species Act has had profound impacts on my State of Wyoming by limiting economic development and restricting the implementation of reasonable and effective land, water, and resource management and use.

It doesn't have to be that way. Under the ESA, once the recovery goals for a species have been met, the species should be delisted. That, however, is not what happens. Instead, and regardless of the actual status of the species, it can take decades to delist a recovered species.

The Canadian gray wolves are a classic example. They were introduced into Yellowstone National Park in 1995 with a recovery goal for the greater Yellowstone area being 100 wolves. We met that goal in 2002.

It then took multiple lawsuits and 15 years to have them actually delisted, which finally happened in 2017, as ordered by the circuit court of appeals. The environmental groups fought against delisting, despite the fact that Wyoming's wolf management plan was approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service and has since proven successful in maintaining the wolf population well in excess of recovery goals.

The Greater Yellowstone grizzly bear is another example. The State of Wyoming has spent over $59 million on recovery and has an excellent management plan in place to ensure a recovered population will continue to be protected. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that the grizzly population has exceeded recovery goals for the past 20 years.

Yet, again, environmental groups have been able to keep the grizzly bear listed through petitioning activist judges to intervene. The proliferation of bears in Wyoming is so great that they now pose a serious and deadly threat to people, livestock, and other wildlife in my State.

I am thankful to my colleagues on the Natural Resources Committee for their support on H.R. 1245, my legislation to delist the Greater Yellowstone population of grizzly bears, and I look forward to passing it out of the House soon.

By continuing to spend limited resources on recovered populations of species, we are deflecting resources from where they should be focused. We are robbing Peter to pay Paul.

In short, as implemented by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and as enforced by activist courts, success is not in recovering a legitimately threatened or endangered species but in ensuring that a recovered species, no matter how robust in number, range, and health, is never delisted.

A related problem is the fact that critical habitat designations are not designed to protect a particular species but to encompass as much area as possible so that the Federal Government and environmental groups can control ever-expanding swaths of land and water. The incentives under the ESA are the exact opposite of what they would actually be if species recovery rather than control were the actual goal.

The ESA has largely become a mechanism by which environmental groups have weaponized the Federal Government and courts to impose restrictions on the use of private property and limit our ability to use our energy and water resources while also receiving massive Federal subsidies through sue and settle actions.

This 50th anniversary of the ESA should be a time to reevaluate and refocus efforts on what the act was originally intended to do. We cannot continue to allow activist courts or agency bureaucrats to block sound species management or infringe on property rights any longer. We must do better. We can do better, and I challenge this body to pursue ESA reform to focus on protecting our beautiful fisheries, wildlife, flora, and fauna.