Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk. Mr. Chairman, in the West, water is the key to everything. One small family, the Gosses--I met them my first year in Congress in 2003--has been fighting a 30-year, protracted battle with the…
Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.
Mr. Chairman, in the West, water is the key to everything. One small family, the Gosses--I met them my first year in Congress in 2003--has been fighting a 30-year, protracted battle with the Forest Service over the water and access to the water.
They have been to two different courts, and the courts said, yes, the water is theirs. The Forest Service responded to the first court by fencing the water in. They said the 23 acres around it was their acreage and they couldn't walk their cows to get to the water.
The Gosses went back to court, and found that the court said, okay, they don't have a right to walk the cows on your 23 acres, but they do have a right to move the water to the cows through a pipe or a ditch. The Forest Service responded by electrifying the fence.
That is the kind of fight that we are in right now. A couple years ago, I stood out over that water for about 2\1/2\ or 3 hours with the Forest Service, the Gosses, and we all negotiated that the fences could be brought in, that accommodations could be met, that we could find habitat other places. And it was all agreed we would get to the water.
Then, subsequently, the Fish and Wildlife Service said, well, there is a jumping mouse. They admitted themselves that the science was not very good, that they had never seen one of the jumping mice there, but they thought it might be there. They admitted that the science was very terrible.
Despite the lack of any scientific evidence, despite everything, now that area has been shut back off.
There are many areas where the jumping mouse could have a critical habitat, but the agency just refuses to do it.
So my amendment is quite simple. It simply says that the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse cannot be listed as endangered or threatened until they do some better science. It is a very straightforward amendment where we are trying to find the balance between the Endangered Species Act and the need for jobs, the need for an economy in the West. And that revolves around open spaces, ranchland, water. It all comes together in this one single issue.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, with respect to the gentlewoman, if the science underlying the decision was sound, and even the Agency itself has admitted that the science was seriously flawed--if the stakes were not so high--the entire listing of species would demand sound science. So this is a serious problem throughout the West and throughout the United States.
If it weren't a matter of being able to provide jobs and have economies in these big rural areas of New Mexico, and there are no other tax bases in those areas, so as we crowd out the ranchers, then counties simply don't have the revenues to survive themselves.
If the stakes weren't these, then I would listen more closely to the gentlewoman's arguments. But as it is, I just don't think that we can sustain a decision like this. If the Fish and Wildlife Service had showed up at that meeting where we found other critical habitat within a couple of miles, it is just that critical habitat didn't block access to this source of water, the only source of water in that section of the ranch, and these are ranches that are on mountain ranges.
So you have the inability for cows to cross the mountain ranges over to the next range. Also, it is miles in between some of the loading stations and the water stations.
So these are things that compel me to say that we have to find something different here. We want the Agency to reconsider it, to look for better science, to look for better critical habitat.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, again, I respect the gentlewoman's opinions and observations.
I would point out that these are 1907 water rights, which, in New Mexico, water rights are given, and the earlier, the better. So they can't get access because of the listing of a species. The science is very flawed.
The Agency had the opportunity to go out to the forest with us. And that day, they simply turned down the opportunity to meet with us. We had the State forester, the head of the U.S. Forest Service of New Mexico there. We had the regional forester. Everyone was there except the people who really needed to be there. They refused our invitation.
I have been working on this single issue for 14 years myself, so it is not like we haven't been discussing the issue at length.
Again, with that, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time
Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.
Mr. Chairman, this issue is very similar to the last one.
As we approached the year 2013-2014, discussions were going on with Fish and Wildlife Service about the potential listing either as endangered or threatened of the lesser prairie chicken. We began to ask for volunteers. We asked for farmers and ranchers, for oil and gas companies, to work together to really come up with a collaborative plan in order to avoid the listing for the lesser prairie chicken as either threatened or endangered, and the industries responded very well.
To date, partners in that effort have contributed more than $64 million in enrollment and mitigation fees. They have agreed to conserve more than 150,000 acres of habitat.
It was at that point that the Fish and Wildlife Service said, okay, this is the best effort we have had in this collaboration nationwide. They were all ecstatic. Then they turned around about a month later and simply listed the lesser prairie chicken.
Again, the science was somewhat lacking in that. So, in 2015, a Federal district court looked at the issue, and they vacated the finding and said that the Fish and Wildlife Service took no account of the ongoing conservation.
Keep in mind that the conservation efforts actually have been working. Just this year, the number of birds is up from 30,000 to 39,000, so almost a 25 percent increase in the population. That is exactly what these collaborative efforts were intended to do.
The court found that the Fish and Wildlife Service didn't conduct a proper analysis and that the analysis they did was neither rigorous nor valid.
So we are simply asking, in this amendment, that the lesser prairie chicken not be listed, that it be delisted.
Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Estes).
Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert), the chairman of the subcommittee.
Mr. Chairman, again, I would point out that the collaboration was unprecedented across the Nation. What is going to happen, if this collaboration fails, is that others are going to say, okay, that collaboration process simply doesn't work.
Though, again, the courts, we are simply agreeing with the court findings in the matter that the Fish and Wildlife Service failed to ask very important questions and needs to reaccomplish the evaluation.
All in all, the States and local areas can and will pitch in to help the species survive. But the heavy-handed approach coming from the Fish and Wildlife Service simply, again, is going to kill jobs and kill the potential of collaborative efforts.
Mr. Chairman, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.
