Bruce Westerman: “Mr. Speaker, I have a question: Which will it be? What is the good science? As I have mentioned before, the Obama…”

“Mr. Speaker, I have a question: Which will it be? What is the good science? As I have mentioned before, the Obama administration, the Bush administration, the first Trump administration, the Biden administration all said the wolf has been recovered. The experts, the scientists at U.S. Fish and Wildlife have said it has been recovered. Yet my friends argue it has not been recovered because there are some places where its native range is that the wolf is not there. I remind everyone, we are in gray wolf territory, historical gray wolf territory. Mr. Speaker, like many, like you probably and myself, I have walked around D.C. at night, and this is a rat-infested city. I think there would be at least a little bit of food for the wolves if we were to turn a pack loose on The Mall. However, what happens when they eat all the rats? What do they go after next? Now, this is a preposterous situation because I don't think anybody really wants a pack of wolves on The Mall. However, if you go down the logic trail that my colleagues are making, the wolf is not recovered until it is back in its historic range. Why do we want to sit in a big city where wolves once were and say: We want wolves, just not in our backyard.”