Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2017

Floor Speech

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Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) was called away. I am standing in for him and want to join the previous amendment offerer in thanking the Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, as well as the staff of that committee, for their hard work on this piece of legislation.

This amendment would affect the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse. As a result of the habitat designations, the U.S. Forest Service has begun to construct electric fences around the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse's habitat, which is located around floodplains and streambeds in New Mexico.

The problem is a number of these critical habitat designations coincide with ranching allotments in New Mexico where ranchers hold what we call territorial water rights. Those are water rights that existed and belonged to these ranchers before New Mexico was even a State. These longstanding water rights provide access that is essential to these ranches. This amendment is needed because the Fish and Wildlife Service and Forest Service are not effectively working with ranchers to maintain their operations.

There is also an issue about the science surrounding this mouse. The mouse has never been seen in a number of the critical habitat areas, and the few mouse sightings on record were made nearly a decade ago. The agencies themselves have admitted that the science used to list the species and designate the critical habitat is seriously limited. Despite that science gap, farmers and ranchers are being denied their private property rights--their territorial water rights-- and are being driven from their allotments all for a mouse that may not even exist in these areas.

Voting for this amendment will send a clear message to the Fish and Wildlife Service that species listings that are not backed by sound science will not stand. We cannot allow unsubstantiated science to destroy the lives of American citizens and the history and heritage of the ranching community and the culture of the ranching community that even predates New Mexico's admission into the Union.

For this reason, I ask that my colleagues support the Pearce amendment to delist this species until legitimate and up-to-date science is available.

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Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, this is a water rights issue in addition to an Endangered Species Act issue. This is an instance in which private water rights are being abrogated for the sake of a mouse that we don't even know exists in this area and the science about which makes it so you can't tell one subspecies from the other of this meadow jumping mouse unless you actually kill the mouse and look at its skull. Now, when it is that extreme in figuring out whether a mouse is endangered or not--whether it is a Preble's meadow jumping mouse or a New Mexico meadow jumping mouse or some other subspecies--we have got a problem with the science.

To block people from territorial water rights--using electric fences in a way that is based on science that is this obscure--doesn't sound, to me, like an effective means by which to work with the ranchers, the culture, and the livelihoods of the people involved. Therefore, once again, I urge support of the Pearce amendment.

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

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