Endangered Species Act should be a tool – not a weapon
By Reps. Dan Newhouse (WA-04) and Bruce Westerman (AR-04)
For decades, litigious environmental groups have lined their pockets by using the Endangered Species Act (ESA) as a weapon.
Instead of working toward effective species conservation, serial litigators use this landmark environmental law to halt land management projects, stifle domestic energy development, and impede otherwise effective local conservation efforts – not as a tool to restore and protect at-risk wildlife, as was its original design.
Late last year, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland claimed, “The Endangered Species Act has been incredibly effective at preventing species from going extinct.” Inexplicably, her statement came as part of a press release announcing the extinction of 23 species that were under the “protection” of the ESA.
You read that right. She lauded the effectiveness of the Endangered Species Act while announcing its failure to prevent the extinction of 23 species.
Many of these species were listed as endangered or threatened decades ago, and – clearly – the law failed to protect them. Only 3% of species listed under the Endangered Species Act have successfully recovered and been delisted. Unfortunately, the Biden Administration is only exacerbating this failing standard.
Secretary Haaland’s uninformed remarks are even more concerning due to the Biden Administration’s recent steps taken to completely gut the recent improvements and modernizations made to the ESA by the Trump Administration and ignore the contributions of local, voluntary, and private conservation partners.
In addition, she recently penned an op-ed threatening to reinstate federal protections for the gray wolf, which was determined to be an ESA success story and removed from the list of threatened species in 2020. Just days later, an activist judge ignored the best available science – and the Biden Administration’s defense of the delisting – and restored protections for the species. It is past time we put a stop to radical environmentalists manipulating the law and ignoring science in order to fulfill their radical agenda.
Our vision of success does not include endless lawsuits and destroyed ecosystems resulting from mismanagement of our resources, nor the extinction of native plants and animals. Our vision aligns with the congressional intent of the ESA: working collaboratively with conservation partners to fully recover listed species and remove them from the list and to work proactively to conserve species so that they never get listed in the first place.
The Biden Administration continues to espouse a lack of understanding when it comes to ongoing species conservation work. Their bureaucratic actions fail to accept that proactive, robust and effective conservation efforts can take place at the state, regional, and local levels without the federal government intruding and asserting burdensome and unmanageable red tape. This Administration fails to accept their responsibility to remove species from the list when it is appropriate, a position that isn’t even supported by the career officials at the agency who are on the record supporting delisting of species like the gray wolf.
Take the greater sage-grouse, for example. This bird, which can be found in several states throughout the West, has found itself at the center of a proxy war that demonstrates how the ESA can be used as a weapon to harm rural communities. The Department of the Interior’s own data clearly shows that the main threats to sage-grouse populations are invasive grasses, drought, wildfire, predation, and insufficient management of wild horses and burros. But instead of addressing these threats and utilizing many of the state and local plans already in place to support the species populations, the Administration is actively seeking to list it under the ESA while also locking up 10 million acres of federal lands in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming under the pretense of habitat protection. A listing of the sage grouse would subject rural communities across the West to burdensome regulations and could dry up ongoing and future conservation funding to protect the species.
We have led many of our members in expressing our opposition to this proposal, and we will continue to hold the Biden Administration accountable for turning the clock backwards on the positive progress made in species recovery by state, local and private conservation efforts. Rather than weaponizing environmental laws as this Administration’s policies seek to do, we should continue incentivizing state, local, and private conservation efforts and focus our limited federal resources on the plants and animals that need it most.
Time and time again, those of us who live and work in rural communities have seen that those who are closest to the land know best how to manage it. The same rings true for species recovery. When it comes to ensuring healthy lands, clean water, and resilient ecosystems, it is local communities we should turn to first, not the federal government.
Species conservation is a shared priority for both Western Caucus members and Republicans on the House Committee on Natural Resources because it is a shared priority for the rural communities we represent. We will continue working to empower states and local managers to do their part for species recovery, and we will continue to stand up against the Biden Administration’s burdensome one-size-fits-all regulations and their backwards logic.
Dan Newhouse represents Washington’s 4th Congressional District and serves as Chairman of the Congressional Western Caucus. Bruce Westerman represents Arkansas’ 4th Congressional District and serves as Ranking Member of the House Committee on Natural Resources.
