Ken Calvert: “I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chair, I support this amendment. The root of the frustration with the Endangered…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chair, I support this amendment. The root of the frustration with the Endangered Species Act is that species rarely get delisted, and people who are directly affected by a listing are condemned to a life of an additional Federal rule indefinitely. Congress tried to prevent this by requiring the Fish and Wildlife Service to review the status of every listed species every 5 years and to down-list or delist species accordingly. Today, the Service has a backlog of 892 species without a current 5- year review. Without these 5-year reviews, species could be recovered and we wouldn't even know it. I find this simply unacceptable. Unless the Service focuses its personnel on inherently Federal responsibilities under the ESA and non-Federal partners take the lead on actual recovery, we will never break the contentious and litigious cycle that we have now. And, by the way, we have actually increased the ESA recovery budget in this bill for 5-year reviews. So let's get ESA working again. Mr. Chair, I urge an ``aye'' vote on this amendment.”