Wayne Gilchrest: “I think we are here in some sense, past all the clutter of people articulating their most emotional feelings, is a bill…”

“I think we are here in some sense, past all the clutter of people articulating their most emotional feelings, is a bill set aside some 30 years ago to have an understanding about how we as Members of Congress, the government, can restore the prodigious bounty of God's creation. How do we understand nature's design? How do we use our intelligence to understand the facts behind how nature sustains itself? Well, in the real world, well, actually, in the real world which is nature, but in the reality of the human condition, we have a lot of other little things that we have to take into consideration. How do you afford an Endangered Species Act? What do you do about private property rights? Do you get enough science? Is the recovery plan appropriate? Do you deal with farmers that have a problem with reintroduced species on the property eating their sheep or their cows? All these things have to be taken into consideration so that we create a policy that protects private property rights, that brings individuals on those farms and that landscape into the process and helps pay for their contribution to the process, that brings Federal agencies in so they can view the landscape, not from just one small little fly or tiger beetle or some other particular species, but upon which the landscape that supports that species, supports clean water, supports clean air, supports the whole ecosystem including human beings, including us as a species.…”