Sportsmen's Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Chair, I rise to oppose H.R. 2406, with great respect for my friend, the gentleman from Virginia. I respect very much what Representative Wittman and others are trying to do.

The best I can do to describe H.R. 2406 is a missed opportunity. Many of the titles in the bill are inoffensive, but others would significantly hinder conservation efforts that benefit hunters, anglers, and other lovers of the outdoors.

I myself am an avid hiker, Madam Chair. I just completed 25 miles on the Appalachian Trail in the snow last week in Representative Goodlatte's district. I am up to 1,288 miles on the Appalachian Trail. I would love to see conservation efforts that protect the long-term legacy of the Appalachian Trail like the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

Simply put, this bill doesn't include the sporting community's top legislative priorities. The Natural Resources Committee Democrats have been clear from the beginning that we are open to discussions that could lead to compromise legislation--legislation that would indeed include many of the pieces of this bill, but also additional titles that would earn it broad bipartisan support.

In a letter several days ago, Ranking Member Grijalva wrote to the chair expressing optimism that a noncontroversial outcome could still be achieved and requesting negotiations to produce a bill that would pass the House without opposition. Unfortunately, this request was denied.

So I would love to have this bill on the suspension calendar, but not on the suspension calendar I would like to detail nine specific objections.

Objection 1, this bill omits the top two priorities of the outdoors community, the permit reauthorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and the permit reauthorization of the North American Wetlands Conservation Act.

LWCF has provided funding to help protect some of Virginia's most special places: the Rappahannock River Valley, Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge, Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Historic District, and the Appalachian Trail.

Studies have shown that for every dollar of LWCF invested, there is a $4 return to communities. The broader outdoor recreation conservation economy is responsible for more than $600 billion in consumer spending every year.

This is one of the Nation's premier programs. Over the years, LWCF has been responsible for more than 40,000 State and local outdoor recreation projects: playgrounds, parks, refuges, and baseball fields. There is strong bipartisan support. I believe 88 percent of Americans want Congress to preserve it. So now is the perfect opportunity to do that.

We have had hearings in the Committee on Natural Resources on Representative Chairman Bishop's bill. We need hearings on Representative Grijalva's H.R. 1814, which has more than 200 bipartisan cosponsors. This bill was the perfect opportunity to include that bill.

It was also the perfect opportunity to do the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, NAWCA. It is a voluntary, nonregulatory conservation program. Farmers, ranchers, and other private landowners support the program, and every project is voluntary. It fosters conservation efforts by the non-Federal sector.

Over the years, nearly 5,000 corporate, small business, nonprofit, State, and local entities have tripled NAWCA dollars by providing matching funds. The 50 State wildlife agencies are all active partners in it, and demand for NAWCA continues to exceed available funds. So this was debated and thoroughly vetted in the 112th and the 113th Congresses. It was unanimously reauthorized by Congress in 2006, and this was a great vehicle to do that.

Objection 2, title X, I believe, which is the ivory title, this would gut the administration's proposed ivory rule. Last year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seized a 1-ton stockpile of illegal elephant ivory, most of which was seized from a Philadelphia antique dealer named Victor Gordon.

For at least 9 years, Gordon imported and sold ivory from freshly killed African elephants in violation of U.S. law and the laws of the countries where the elephants were poached and the ivory was stolen. While a ton of ivory was confiscated, there is no way to know how much Gordon had sold during the previous decade or where it is now.

How did he get away with it for so long?

The ivory was doctored so it looked old enough to pass through a loophole in enforcement of the African Elephant Conservation Act, a law that was passed by us in 1989 to end the commercial import and export of ivory.

The Obama administration's proposed ivory rule would close that loophole and prevent U.S. citizens from being involved--knowingly or unknowingly--in elephant poaching and the trafficking crisis. Ending the commercial ivory trade does not mean taking away the people's musical instruments, ivory-handled pistols, or family heirlooms. Museum collections, scientific specimens, and sport-hunted trophies will also be allowed to move freely. Neither the Fish and Wildlife Service's direct order nor the forthcoming Endangered Species Act rule restrict possession or transport within the United States, and transport into and out of the country will still be allowed with the appropriate documentation.

Further, items up to 200 grams--7 ounces--of ivory can still be bought and sold, and that is more ivory than is in any piano or ivory- gripped pistol.

What the rule will do is stop profiteering off elephant parts in this country. As long as ivory has monetary value, people will kill elephants to get it. Eliminating value will eliminate demand, and it is a necessary component of the broader U.S. strategy to reduce wildlife poaching and trafficking.

I am disappointed that Ranking Member Grijalva's amendment to strike ivory was not made in order in the Rules Committee, but I understand no one wanting to vote on this floor to be in favor of killing more elephants. Regardless, the inclusion of that provision in this bill before us today shows that somehow we are unaware or unconcerned with the fact that poachers are slaughtering nearly 100 African elephants a day.

Objection 3, Madam Chair, is section 302 of SHARE Act that would allow polar bear trophies. It creates a loophole in the Marine Mammal Protection Act to allow a handful of wealthy trophy hunters to import polar bear trophies into the U.S. in defiance of current law.

If passed, this will be the fourth major carve-out by Congress since 1994 for Americans who have hunted polar bears in Canada. Although the number of polar bears affected by this loophole will be relatively small, the cumulative effect of the carve-outs has been detrimental to an imperiled species.

And these trophy hunters were not caught up in government bureaucracy or red tape. All the individuals hunted the bears after the George W. Bush administration proposed the species for listing as threatened under the Endangered Species Act despite repeated warnings from government agencies, hunting groups, and the conservation community that the trophies could face a bar on importation and that these hunters were hunting at their own risk.

Granting this request would create a dangerous precedent by encouraging hunters to race for trophies the moment any species is considered for listing when such species most need protection, knowing they can rely on Congress later to let them import their trophies.

Objection 4, the provision gives States the veto power on Federal fishing management and national marine parks, sanctuaries, and monuments.

I flew to Homestead, Florida, this past spring, Madam Chair, for their public hearing on the Biscayne Bay, a national marine that was set aside by the park service. It was a small, small percentage of the total Federal lands and waters. About half the fishermen there were for it and half the fishermen were against it, but it missed the fact that these were not State waters and that we in Congress have a responsibility to the entire Nation, not just for any one county or one region.

Our oceans cover more than 70 percent of the Earth, and 99 percent of that water is open to fishing, but in some cases science shows that we must protect certain areas. We all want more people to have more fishing opportunities, but the fish have to be there.

I was impressed by something the director of NOAA told me a couple years ago, that the fishing marine reserves in the Pacific set aside by George W. Bush, you can now see them from space because the fish have recovered so quickly within those reserves, that the fishing vessels outline the perimeter of the reserve, which you can see from 100 miles away.

Objection 5, title 15 bars the Forest Service from restricting dog deer hunting on certain national forest lands in Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The aim is to allow for a continued hunting of deer with dogs, which is an extremely controversial practice that pits landowners against hunters.

Landowners complained. This didn't come from overzealous environmentalists or Federal regulators. It came from landowner complaints to the Forest Service to ban deer dogging in the Louisiana Kisatchie National Forest.

Congress should let expert land managers manage land and other resources valued by all Americans. This decision to ban hunting deer with dogs was necessary to create balance among multiple users of the forest, and Congress should respect that.

Objection 6 is title IV that creates the Recreational Lands Self- Defense Act. This bill would actually prohibit the Army from developing or enforcing any regulation that prohibits an individual from possessing a firearm at recreation areas administered by the Corps of Engineers. It is just hard to believe that we are going to restrict the Army from regulating gun use on Army property. If the Army is in charge of lands management, it should be able to determine whether firearms are appropriate on a site.

Army lands abut family homes and other sensitive sites. We should not lightly permit access in places where an accidental shot could wind up in someone's backyard or in a sensitive location. Accidental shots are real. A longtime family friend--a West Point graduate and a retired Army colonel--was sitting at his desk when a bullet, an accidental bullet, came through the window, hit him in the back of the neck, and he is a quadriplegic today.

Objection 7 is title IX that changes a successful program, the Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act. On the Natural Resources Committee, we have heard much from the majority, appropriately, about how we need to deal with the incredible infrastructure deferred maintenance backlog that we have on lands that we own. Basically, that we shouldn't buy more until we take care of what we already have. This would allow the existing act to take 100 percent of the land from land transactions and spend it on deferred maintenance.

This violates the whole original idea of the act: that we would sell Federal land to get more Federal land back. Furthermore, it makes these expenditures subject to appropriation. So if we bring in X million dollars in land sold, we don't have to buy or even use that X million dollars on new deferred maintenance. It could just go to--wherever.

I am disappointed that the bipartisan land-for-land FLTFA version that sportsmen in 165 groups have championed for a decade isn't included in the SHARE Act today.

Objection 8 is title VI. Currently over 75 percent of all Federal land is open to hunting and fishing, but title VI deems all Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service land open for hunting unless it is closed by the head of the agency through a long closure process. Right now, they can be closed by local land managers.

Once again, I find this a little ironic because so much of the theme from the majority, which I respect, is to move decisionmaking back close to the communities that are actually affected. In this case, they are moving it away from the communities and to Washington, D.C., to close these lands. It also undermines the Wilderness Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act.

Finally, Madam Chair, objection 9 is trapping. The SHARE Act would dramatically expand the use of body-gripping traps on Federal public lands, including in sensitive wilderness areas. The provision takes the step, unprecedented in Federal law, of adding trapping to the definition of hunting, then creating a presumption that all these Federal public lands are open. Millions of acres of land would be open to trapping.

Even under current law, roughly 6 million targeted animals are killed in traps every year, according to Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. Held in a painful leghold trap, a beaver, a bobcat, a fox, will try desperately to break free in the hours or days until they succumb to dehydration, predators, or death at the hands of trappers. Traps are dangerous and they are indiscriminate in snaring not only targeted areas, but threaten endangered species, pets, or even unsuspecting children and adults.

Leghold traps have already been prohibited or severely restricted in nine U.S. States in over 80 countries. Congress should be acting to protect the public, endangered species, and pets from dangerous and indiscriminate body-gripping traps, not expanding their use into additional areas. Really, how can trapping be described as sportsmanlike?

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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps).

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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Walz).

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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), my colleague and good friend.

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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

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Mr. BEYER. Madam Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

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Mr. BEYER. Mr. Chair, I inquire how much time the minority side has remaining.
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Mr. BEYER. I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, in closing, I would like to thank the co-chairs of the Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus, Mr. Wittman and Mr. Walz, for putting this together.

I clearly resist the idea that our opposition comes from the radical left. The 37 million hunters and fishermen out there are not Democrats. They are not Republicans. They are both. They are not conservative or liberal. They represent all Americans.

Representative McClintock and Chairman Bishop talked about the 928,000 acres, BLM and Forest Service, which are closed now. I very much respect that that seems like a big number and that perhaps there should be movement on that.

I think the question is: Should those decisions be made by State and local land managers or moved to Washington, D.C., to the head of the Forest Service, to the head of BLM? I think it is weird that, in this body, we are talking about moving things to Washington for the decision to be made.

In fact, in the hearing we had on Chairman Bishop's Land and Water Conservation Fund reauthorization, much of it was about moving the decisionmaking back to States and local governments. Perhaps there is a way to think about opening up these 928,000 acres with more input from State and local governments in the time to come.

On ivory and trafficking, Representative Wittman and I had a good conversation about how we really don't want it to address heirlooms that have been in the family for generations. That is not what the Obama rule is trying to do. We are looking at preventing trafficking.

Every 15 minutes every day, an elephant is killed. I would love to explore the economic argument that somehow this ivory rule will make African elephants more endangered. What we are trying to do is cut off demand.

Finally, Majority Whip Scalise talked about being hostile to hunting and fishing. I do think it is probably silly to think of the Army Corps of Engineers as a radical leftist organization. We want them to open the lands appropriately, but this is probably not the legislation to do it.

I think many of these provisions will likely be dead on arrival in the Senate. If it passes, as it is likely to do with the majority, I am looking forward to working with Representative Wittman, Representative Walz, and others to get a good, bipartisan bill at the end of the day that we can all support for the hunters and fishermen of the United States.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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