Congressional Western Caucus

Floor Speech

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Mr. BIGGS. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Washington (Mr. Newhouse). I appreciate his leadership and work on these very important issues.

I am grateful to have a few minutes to speak and to address some of these issues that confront us as a nation and confront us in the Western part of this country, particularly in Arizona.

Land management and species management are critically important issues everywhere in this country, especially so in the West. Nationwide, the Federal Government owns one out of every three acres. But when you go to the West, Madam Speaker, it is one out of every two acres. In fact, in my State of Arizona, only about 20 percent of the total land area is in private hands. Federal holdings actually exceed the size of the State of Virginia.

Of course, Federal control over land means that bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., rather than knowledgeable State and local officials get to set the rules, and that certainly is the case when it comes to the Endangered Species Act.

ESA listings, in theory, are meant to give short-term support for species recovery. They are not supposed to turn into permanent classifications. However, as we have been hearing a litany of stories in this Special Order tonight--and as everyone who participates in this country knows--the reality is far different. In fact, less than 2 percent of species have been removed from the ESA list.

Another significant problem is that current Fish and Wildlife Service policies make it far easier to list a new species than to examine the current list for potential removal.

Excessive ESA listings place enormously costly requirements on private landowners and even State and local government agencies.

For this reason, I introduced the LIST Act in the last Congress to greatly speed up the rate in which recovered species may be taken off the ESA list once the Secretary of the Interior receives objective data that the species in question has recovered. I am pleased to see that my good friend from Montana, Representative Greg Gianforte, is championing the LIST Act this year. It is a great piece of legislation.

Meanwhile, I am aiming to reform the ESA from an entirely different perspective with a new bill I introduced last week that I am calling the American Sovereignty and Species Protection Act.

I would bet that most Americans would be surprised to learn that the ESA currently allows the U.S. Government to buy foreign land--that is right, non-U.S. land, land in foreign nations--to protect endangered species in other countries. While this may be a well-intentioned policy, it is tragically naive. Remember that just because a Department of the Interior official purchases foreign land with the hope that it will be used to protect an endangered species, it does not mean that a foreign government will see things in the same way. Because the U.S. does not have sovereignty over the internal affairs of other nations, and exerts especially little influence over the developing nations in which so many endangered species live, I would much rather see taxpayer dollars used to advance domestic priorities.

The American Sovereignty and Species Protection Act, the LIST Act, and all the other ESA modernization efforts we have been talking about today in this packet of bills will help us to scale back bureaucratic overreach and still ensure that critically endangered species are protected. Both aims are achievable.

As the Western Caucus' chief regulatory officer, I will work with great leaders like those who have spoken and like our host today, Dan Newhouse from Washington, to ensure that our goals are met.

Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Newhouse for his leadership and for yielding.

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