2023 Species Week

Floor Speech

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, you probably didn't know this, but 50 years ago, President Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law, which was designed to do two very important things: Prevent species from going extinct and promoting their recovery.

Mr. Speaker, since then, hundreds of plants and animals have joined the endangered or threatened species list, spurring conservation and recovery efforts at all levels of government. While well-intentioned, this law, unfortunately, has been abused and twisted so much that it doesn't even begin to achieve its goals. In short, it is a failure.

Although there have been some successes in the past 50 years, only 72 of the 1,389 listed species have been recovered and removed from the list. That is a 5 percent success rate. Only in the Federal Government would anyone consider 5 percent a passing grade.

The Congressional Western Caucus has long advocated for improvements to modernize the ESA and make it more effective for our species and more transparent for the American people.

We have advocated on behalf of the rural communities that we represent who are severely impacted by ESA listing decisions and who, in many cases, are working in collaboration with private landowners, community groups, tribes, local governments to promote successful species recovery and land conservation. We have advocated to administration after administration to follow the science and fulfill the congressional intent of the law which is to promote recovery of these species and remove them from the endangered species list.

That is why I am really proud, Mr. Speaker, to host this Special Order tonight where you will hear from my Western Caucus colleagues about successful, locally-led recovery efforts that are taking place across this country, about the need for conservation, not just preservation, of our species, the different impacts that ESA listing decisions have on local communities and economies, and some of the legislative reforms that are needed to finally bring the ESA into the 21st century.

As we have seen over the past 50 years, ESA has become a weapon used by extreme environmentalists and by serial litigators to slow or halt critical economic development and land management projects in rural communities throughout the United States.

From preventing the restoration of our forests to creating excessively burdensome roadblocks to domestic energy development, the ESA used in this way actually can do more harm than good.

These combative environmental groups use the ESA to drive a political wedge to achieve their true ambition, the end of ranching, the end of resource development, and the end of timber harvest on public lands. It is not just a western or a public lands issue.

There are approximately 1.3 billion acres of private land in the United States and 926 of the currently listed species are on those private lands, which means cooperation with these communities and these landowners is essential. It is crucial for recovery.

Unfortunately, ESA regulations often negatively affect the very people we need as conservation partners through land use restrictions, through reduced property values, and costly permitting requirements. In effect, the law literally makes enemies out of the people most critical to the species recovery.

We must empower our local, our State, and our Tribal partners to collaborate on comprehensive recovery and conservation efforts, and we understand more stringent regulations will not lead to more successful species recovery.

In rural America, we value the responsible management of species, but we have to do so in a way that does not destroy our economies, that does not decimate our lands, or leave our communities vulnerable to natural disasters.

We need flexible tools, not tools that are one-size-fits-all regulations that come out of the Federal Government, to be successful in our shared goal of recovery of our Nation's endangered species and threatened species.

Tonight, as we always do, we are here to raise the voices of rural communities across this country, and tonight we are focused on those voices that are telling us how they have been impacted by the ESA and make their message heard.

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for relating some of the impacts that he sees in his State. You don't have to be in the Western United States to be negatively impacted by some of the things that are in the ESA that need updating. I thank him for relating that.

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. I thank him for being here tonight.

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Tiffany. You are absolutely right. In the ESA there have been some success stories and we need to learn to celebrate them. More important, the resources that are being used in successfully recovering those species could then be turned to other resources that desperately need the help.

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, he had to go there. I thank Mr. Valadao for his words. Sometimes going off script is dangerous at times, but I think he made a really good point about right now in California, there is an abundance of water, so much so that some communities are flooding.

If we could just store that water, then we would not have to idle all of that farmland that I hear is being set aside because there is not enough water to irrigate. Communities wouldn't be struggling. We need the food that California produces as a country. That is important to us. These are the things that are not just affecting people in California but the whole country.

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, I think Mr. Valadao's time has expired, but he makes some really good points, and I appreciate that. Since he is a young man, I am always amazed at how much he has picked up in a short amount of time here.

Next, I turn to someone that has really impressed with her knowledge of natural resource issues, not just in her home State but throughout the country.

Hageman).

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, I couldn't have said it better. Resources are being used to keep the species on the list indefinitely.

We should be thinking about the good of the species and the success of the recovery of the species. Instead, we want to keep them on this list to be used for other reasons. That is what we have to get to the bottom of.

He is a dear friend. He is someone who came into Congress with me and has risen to the chair of the Natural Resources Committee and is doing just a great job. He is one of my star members of the Western Caucus.

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Westerman for his remarks.

How appropriate it is to look at the original language, the intent, to illustrate how far we have strayed from that mission. I thank Chairman Westerman for those great words.

Next, Mr. Speaker, I turn to somebody who I visited in his district, and I think he knows firsthand just to what extent the ESA has been weaponized to stop some of the things that, as a country, we have to accomplish.

Mr. Stauber from the great State of Minnesota happens to be one of the vice chairmen of the Congressional Western Caucus. I would love to hear what the gentleman has to say about this.

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. I couldn't agree more that the gray wolf in my State has recovered, as well. They are prolific animals. They are flexible. They are nomadic. We really should declare a victory that they have recovered and celebrate that success and then use those resources to focus on other species that need our attention.

I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson), the chairman of the Committee on Agriculture and someone that knows, from his perspective, not only a lot about agriculture but a lot about the Endangered Species Act.

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Thompson for elevating the voices of the people of Pennsylvania on this important issue.

He is right. The conservation programs that we have in this country have done a lot of good for species across the country.

That is why he is the chairman of the Agriculture Committee because he understands things like that.

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. That too. We all do once in a while.

I yield to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Mann), a great agricultural State, and a beautiful district that I have visited.

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Mann and appreciate his pointing out how important it is to listen to people in the local area who understand the environment, the climate that they live in, and that often they are earning their living by farming.

We have heard from several different parts of the country represented here with the different Members of Congress. So, I am going back to the great State of California to another one of the Western Caucus vice chairs, someone that is very outspoken on these issues, and has tremendous background and knowledge on the Endangered Species Act.

I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa), for being part of this conversation and also elevating the voices of the people he represents.

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, Mr. LaMalfa is correct, there are a lot of things that we should talk about. We have a limited amount of time, but he is very good at expressing the needs of the people that he represents and making sure that people understand.

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Mr. NEWHOUSE. Mr. Speaker, in summation, as you have heard tonight, the Endangered Species Act, signed into law 50 years ago--and I think you probably picked this up--was designed to do two things: It was designed to prevent the species from going extinct and to promote its recovery. We need to return to that mission. We need to work with landowners and local governments, Tribes, and always keep the well- being of the species in mind in that work.

Mr. Speaker, we also need to be transparent for the American people. There is just too much at stake for us not to be. As members of the Congressional Western Caucus, we are going to continue to elevate the voice of the people of rural America on important issues like the Endangered Species Act and so many others.

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