Barbara Boxer: “I thank the Chair. She has raised strong complaints about the Endangered Species Act, another one of our bedrock laws…”

“I thank the Chair. She has raised strong complaints about the Endangered Species Act, another one of our bedrock laws that the Interior Secretary must implement. During her earlier tenure at the Department of the Interior, she complained the courts were providing an overly broad interpretation of the ESA's habitat provisions. She argued that the habitat protection standard should be extremely narrow so that only habitat that was immediately occupied by an endangered species would be protected. This interpretation would have ignored everything we know about the biological needs of species. It would have protected, for example, a bald eagle's nesting tree but allowed the rest of its surrounding habitat to be destroyed. With that kind of thinking, the bald eagle would never have been saved because you save the tree and then right around the tree you don't take any measures to protect the bald eagle. Let us show a picture of some of our habitat. We are talking about God's creations that we have a responsibility to protect. This is Mohave National Preserve Joshua trees. We have to move to protect them. Let us show some other habitat. Let us show the beautiful habitat of Alaska. Here we can see some of the magnificent caribou up in Alaska. We will be arguing a lot about that issue. We can see, if we are going to protect their habitat, we cannot just protect a small amount. It is as if saying that we are going to protect the air in one State and not in another one.”