Frank Lautenberg: “this bill would exempt the Department of Defense from respecting critical habitat for endangered species on its lands.…”

“this bill would exempt the Department of Defense from respecting critical habitat for endangered species on its lands. This provision of the bill is flawed for three reasons. One, it would severely weaken our country's efforts to protect endangered species. There is a lot of effort that has gone into developing legislation in protecting endangered species. Seeing them disappear is a painful recognition. We are now beginning to see species disappear from our oceans, the Atlantic Ocean. The newspapers have been featuring stories about the disappearance of species like cod, halibut, and blue marlin. We have to be careful because each of these affects the rest of the ecology. That could be disastrous. Second, this action is simply not necessary to maintain our military readiness. An example is the dispute over Vieques Island in Puerto Rico, the territory off the mainland of Puerto Rico. Third, it ignores the Defense Department's long record of successfully balancing readiness and conservation. We want to do both. Protecting critical habitat has long been an essential tool that Federal, State, and local jurisdictions have used to protect endangered species. When endangered species have no place to live, they perish.”