Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011
Floor Speech
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Madam Chair, I rise to correct some of the statements that were just made. In my home State of Wyoming, we have more than 30,000 wild horses. The wild horses have no natural predators. And I have ridden BLM wild horses. My sister adopted two of them. I've ridden them. We've used them on our ranch, and I know whereof I speak.
Wild horses overgrazing our fragile ecosystems in the West on lands that were not conducive to the type of grazing that occurs when a hoofed animal that does not have a split hoof is grazing causes the soil to be tamped down. Horses are a solid-hoofed animal. When they run, they tamp the soil. When we have our sparse rains, it runs off, thereby causing soil erosion and causing difficult grazing situations.
The natural grazers on that land for millennia were split-hoofed animals such as elk and bison, and that is why sheep and cattle are more conducive to protecting the grazing of that sparse fragile resource than a solid-hoofed animal. When you put too many solid-hoofed animals tamping down that fragile grass with a very shallow reservoir of top soil, you cause overgrazing and you are loving horses in a way that causes the fragile grass ecosystem to the Western States to die.
It is this Congress that has caused the problems by saying that we cannot slaughter horses. Yet we're not supposed to keep them in pens. We're supposed to allow them to overgraze the West.
When the gentle people east of the Mississippi will take these excess horses into their backyards, I will support this amendment. Until then, I oppose efforts by those well-meaning people that measure animal unit months by the acre and we measure acres by the animal unit month.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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AMENDMENT NO. 193 OFFERED BY MRS. LUMMIS
Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.
Mr. MORAN. Madam Chairman, I reserve a point of order on this amendment.
The Acting CHAIR. The gentleman from Virginia reserves a point of order.
The Clerk will designate the amendment.
The text of the amendment is as follows:
Page 264, line 3, after the dollar amount, insert ``(reduced by $2,750,000)''.
Page 264, line 4, after the dollar amount, insert ``(reduced by $2,250,000)''.
Page 264, line 23, after the dollar amount, insert ``(reduced by $15,055,000)''.
Page 264, line 24, after the dollar amount, insert ``(reduced by $2,500,000)''.
Page 278, line 3, after the dollar amount, insert ``(reduced by $9,100,000)''.
Page 278, line 4, after the dollar amount, insert ``(reduced by $3,400,000)''.
Page 359, line 13, after the dollar amount, insert ``(increased by $35,055,000)''.
The Acting CHAIR. The gentlewoman from Wyoming is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam Chairman, in December, I voted for that historic agreement between President Obama and Congress to keep American taxes low and to extend unemployment benefits. Now we are here to debate how to pay for that, and I have an idea about how to help pay for that.
My amendment, No. 193, would strike the remaining funding for this 6 months in this year totaling $35 million from the budgets of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the BLM and the Forest Service for the purpose of buying new Federal land. There are many alternatives to buying land with cash that would allow them to continue using Yankee ingenuity, and those include land exchanges.
In my own State, we have over half a million acres that have been designated for disposal by Federal agencies because these lands don't fit into good land management, yet there are other lands that these same Federal agencies would like to acquire. They can do exchanges. They can do sales of this land that is designated for disposal and purchase other lands that work better for the fragmented land ownership patterns that we sometimes experience in the West. This is a much better alternative to using $35 million to pay cash to buy new land that adds to the management base and responsibility. At the same time, it would free up land that would be disposed of for people to buy and begin to earn a living on.
So this is a way to create jobs, not to burden the Federal Government, and to recognize that good stewardship and good conservation can be practiced by good Federal and private partnerships. Those are the opportunities that are available if we adopt this amendment. It saves the taxpayers money and it helps pay for those people receiving unemployment benefits, and this is a win-win amendment.
It is only a moratorium, and when we begin the next fiscal year, we would have an opportunity, from having reviewed projects between the Natural Resources Committee and the Interior Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, and have a better understanding of the ultimate goal of our land acquisitions programs within these Federal agencies.
So, Madam Chairman, I urge adoption of the amendment.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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AMENDMENT NO. 194 OFFERED BY MRS. LUMMIS
Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.
The Acting CHAIR. The Clerk will designate the amendment.
The text of the amendment is as follows:
Page 266, strike line 12 and insert ``on February 27, 2008 (73 Fed. Reg. 10514 et seq.) without''.
Mr. MORAN. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order against this amendment.
The Acting CHAIR. The gentleman from Virginia reserves a point of order.
The gentlewoman from Wyoming is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. LUMMIS. Mr. Chairman, first of all I want to thank you personally, as well as your colleague from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz) and also Mrs. McMorris Rodgers of Washington, for your work on this amendment.
The continuing resolution as written would reinstate a 2009 Fish and Wildlife determination that the gray wolf in Montana and Idaho should be removed from the endangered species list. This amendment would replace that 2009 determination with an earlier-approved Fish and Wildlife determination, the one made in 2008, and that expands the scope of delisting of the gray wolf to include the full range of the Northern Rockies wolf.
Mr. Chairman, after gray wolves were introduced in 1995 into Yellowstone National Park in my home State and placed on the endangered species list under section 10(j), which is the nonessential experimental population section of the Endangered Species Act, a list was determined about what it would take to recover the species, when would we consider it recovered, and it was determined by experts at the time that the recovery would be complete if the population of wolves grew to 300 wolves with at least 30 breeding pairs. That was the target, that was the goal, 300 wolves, 30 breeding pairs.
So how many wolves are there today, Mr. Chairman? Here we are, 16 years later. There are more than 1,600 wolves and 113 breeding pairs. By every reasonable definition, the wolf has recovered, and yet these wolves remain on the endangered species list. They remain protected, even as they overwhelm and decimate other wild game herds. For example, in the Grovont, the moose population in terms of young calves has declined 90 percent, 90 percent, and it is due to wolf depredation.
Wolves remain protected in each State because of court determinations, not because of science, and it is now time to be honest about the wolf and its recovery. Its continued inclusion on the endangered species list has everything to do with special interests and emotion and nothing to do with science. Organizations that repeatedly sue the government at taxpayer expense orchestrate these strategies and make people believe that the wolf is not recovered. The simple truth is the wolf is doing very well.
Lest anyone be confused, my amendment will not create an open season on wolves. It will return management of the wolf populations back to the States, and they are the ones who suffer the effects of the wolves. It will allow for appropriate management of wolf herds, wolf herds by any definition, that have fully recovered.
So it is time to be honest. It is time to delist.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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