Sportsmen's Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Chairman, today I am offering an amendment to the SHARE Act to direct the Government Accountability Office to delve deeper into an important issue, and that is the ivory trade, which has sparked international concern.

Last year my home State of California became the third State in the country to approve tougher restrictions on the intrastate ivory trade, joining New York and New Jersey in that regard.

The new California law, AB 96, closes a loophole that had allowed the import of ivory harvested from animals killed before 1977.

Now, this loophole made a ban of the import of elephant ivory nearly impossible to enforce because distinguishing between pre- and post-1977 ivory products would require very expensive isotope testing.

The California law also included a ban on the growing trade in mammoth ivory--this is ivory discovered in Siberia and elsewhere-- ironically made easier because of warming weather and melting tundra due to the impacts of climate change.

There is growing concern that Chinese ivory traders are passing off illegal elephant tusks as mammoth ivory in order to avoid international elephant ivory bans.

But distinguishing between mammoth ivory and elephant ivory requires technical testing, which makes, again, enforcement of an elephant ivory ban very difficult unless the mammoth ivory trade is also addressed.

Now, some argue that, despite this difficulty, legal mammoth ivory can reduce the market for illegal elephant ivory. Although I don't agree with that, I do understand the concerns.

That is why, with this amendment, we are simply asking the GAO to study the issue, to look at what various experts have to say, and give us some advice.

To make smart policy decisions, we need that kind of information on how a ban on the trade of fossilized ivory from mammoths would affect the illegal importation and trade of elephant ivory within the United States.

So I respectfully request your support of this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I would request an ``aye'' vote.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. HUFFMAN. I thank the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. Chairman, I am glad that the gentleman brought up the dilemma that this amendment would pose for law enforcement. It would, shockingly, actually, impose individual penalties on law enforcement officers who are just trying to do their jobs but who might mistakenly detain someone in connection with his possession of a firearm if he were transporting it in a way that is protected under this amendment.

This is going to have a chilling effect on law enforcement's ability to protect Americans from gun trafficking, to make us safer at a time when there are more guns in the hands of more people than ever before, when we have more accidents, when we are experiencing a tragic gun violence epidemic.

I am also concerned that this amendment goes a little further than just being a narrow cleanup of the anecdotal stories we heard about travelers who were inconvenienced or detained. As I read the amendment, it not only would allow a person to walk down the street with an unloaded gun, as long as that gun had a trigger lock on it--regardless of State law, regardless of any local rules that may be in effect--it would allow one to take that gun onto trains, cable cars, and trollies even if local jurisdictions prohibited that. Again, so long as the gun had a trigger lock in place.

Now, in my district we had a tragic incident a couple of years ago in which a young teenager had a toy AK-47, and law enforcement believed that it was an actual gun that was threatening members of that community. They fired shots that took that young man's life. Imagine the dilemma, whether intended or unintended, as a consequence of this bill, and people could suddenly go into parks or even onto public transportation with real AK-47s.

What kind of dilemma would law enforcement face?
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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Chairman, there are some iconic places in this country that define America. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska is one of those places. It is a one-of-a-kind treasure.

Today, for the first time, the full House of Representatives has an opportunity to cast a vote to permanently preserve and protect this special place.

Now, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fitzpatrick), my Republican friend, has joined me in introducing the underlying bill that is incorporated in this amendment. Together, we are carrying the torch that prior generations of bipartisan leaders have carried. They have understood that America's Arctic is a uniquely wild place.

It was Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who first established Federal protections for the coastal plain in 1960 and Democratic Chairman Mo Udall who expanded the refuge, doubling its size in 1980.

I had the great privilege to visit the Arctic Refuge last summer. I camped in the wilderness and I came away with an increased sense of urgency to permanently protect the Arctic Refuge's coastal plain.

Allowing drilling in the Arctic Refuge would irreparably disrupt a very important ecosystem. It would impact the way of life for the Gwich'in people and forever destroy one of our Nation's last great wild places. That is why I am offering this amendment to the SHARE Act, to ask that we protect this American wilderness once and for all.

My amendment would designate the threatened biological heart of the refuge, the coastal plain, as wilderness, to finally recognize the intrinsic value of this land and what it holds to ensure that it remains pristine for generations to come.

Congress has been debating whether to drill in this area for nearly three decades. As our public lands suffer from the effects of climate change, most significantly in Alaska, I believe time is of the essence.

Now, the Arctic Refuge is wild, it is spectacular, and most importantly, it is owned by all Americans, not by the oil industry. That is why Congressman Fitzpatrick and I introduced our bipartisan legislation to permanently designate it as wilderness, following the bipartisan legacy that this legislation has enjoyed for decades.

Arctic Refuge support has always been diverse and nationwide. During the recent public comment period for the draft conservation plan, the Fish and Wildlife Service received nearly 1 million comments in support of wilderness for the Arctic Refuge and in opposition to oil and gas exploration and development. Alaskans showed overwhelming support at public hearings and sent thousands of comments, including from 100 businesses across the State from Kaktovik to Juneau.

This legislation has been introduced in every Congress for almost three decades and has never come to a full vote on the House floor. I am grateful that, in January of 2015, for the first time, the Department of the Interior released a conservation plan for the Arctic Refuge that recommended wilderness protection--a recommendation that was transmitted to Congress.

Only Congress can act to designate the coastal plain as wilderness. Now is the time to seize that historic opportunity.

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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Chairman, with great respect to the senior legislator from Alaska, I have no doubt that he knows and understands the coastal plain and that area far better than I do and that anyone else in this body does, but I do know this: every Member of this body-- in fact, every American--has a stake in protecting the coastal plain of the Arctic wilderness.

Migratory birds from the coastal plain go to all 49 of the other States. We are connected, whether we know it or not, with this critical, vital ecosystem in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.

The whole point of wilderness is to protect areas that we actually may never camp out in, that we may never see, but that are, nevertheless, of such great intrinsic value that they deserve this special protection. That is what this is all about.

As to the argument that we need lots of new oil extraction and development in the Arctic, I would just point out that right next door to the Arctic Refuge is an enormous, essentially equal-sized area that we set aside for that purpose. It is called the National Petroleum Reserve. The oil industry has not seen fit to develop in that area, nor does it look like they will any time soon, with oil hovering around $30 a barrel and this week the Saudis saying they may be taking it all the way down to $20 a barrel.

Right now, because of its overdependence on the oil economy, the State of Alaska is hemorrhaging. Oil revenues are down by half. The permanent fund is hemorrhaging. Meanwhile, the tourist economy, which is built around preserving and protecting natural resources, is growing and will soon eclipse oil revenues in terms of the economic impact.

Let's look to the future.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. HUFFMAN. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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