Jeff Merkley

Thank you very much, and with your agreement, we'll put your entire written testimony into the record.

Native communities have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic with Native COVID mortality rates twice as high as non-Native populations.

The pandemic simply highlighted and exacerbated them.

Today, we convene this hearing at an important time when health care remains at the forefront of our minds as we attempt to move past the COVID-19 pandemic.

I appreciate the commitment you have expressed to make sure it sustains its scope and functionality, incredibly important to my state.

Thank you for your hard work, and your leadership, and your entire team.

Will the Department honor the requirement in 2022 fiscal year to make sure that this Western Oregon Operating Plan is maintained in its full scope and functionality?

Will you continue to work over these 2 years before the--to do everything we possibly can to massively increase habitat for the monarch and other pollinators?

Senator, you are absolutely right. There are a tremendous number of vacancies.

I am deeply concerned about agency process bottlenecks that really frustrate our ability to get LWCF projects done in a reasonable timeframe.

I urge you to choose the no-lease option in your final plan.

I will never forget the 2020 Labor Day Fires in Oregon where I traveled some 600 miles back and forth across the state, never getting out of the smoke, and seeing six communities absolutely burned to the ground.

I did specifically mention enforcement.

I am really struck by how being a kid when we drive north and south in the state; we would always be stopping to clean all the insects off our windshield, and now that is a very, very rare moment.

We need a dramatically improved plan, not just simply a new version of a recycling strategy that fails.

You can't hardly pick up any kind of newspaper that doesn't talk about the expanding problems with microplastics, the problems with the plastics being swept out to sea.

Public Law 280 is a nearly 70-year-old law affecting criminal jurisdiction in tribal lands in six states, including Oregon.

It is like a heroin addict saying that the solution to heroin addiction is more heroin.

We are terrified of the impact on our ocean resources.

I know you are diligently trying to make a difference through your leadership, and your rebuilding of the Agency.

There is a hundred Senators who have communities that have received grants, and they are very excited about the grants in there, but they are very concerned about costs going up while they are waiting.

The prices we experience are extremely painful to Americans, they are devastating, they are primarily the result of disruption from Putin's war on Ukraine.

We have to address this, and this actually isn't just about the monarchs, it is about pollinators in general.

It is critical the Department use all its resources and tools at its disposal, including tribal co-management, interagency agreements, like the Western Oregon Operating Plan, and Forest and Rangeland collaboratives to get this funding on…

I hope that there will be a moment 10 years from now when we can say that that 98 percent collapse in the monarch has been reversed before we lose the western monarch.