Rob Bishop

NEPA was never intended to be a weapon for litigants to force delays and denials on all sorts of activities with a Federal nexus.

My hope is, with this hearing, to pause, take a step back, and examine through the witnesses' testimonies how NEPA has been weaponized by vexing litigation.

the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), while not perfect, is a vital conservation law

We reject the premise of the hearing and the misuse of the term 'lawfare' as applied to NEPA.

The first bill we are going to consider will be the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act by Congressman Royce.

Shark finning was made illegal in the United States by U.S. actors both in 2000, and once again in 2010.

The other proposal to be considered by us is the Sustainable Shark Fisheries and Trade Act, which is Congressman Webster's.

all Federal lands have a maintenance backlog including the Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Forest Service.

If we don't do something like this and identify a specific revenue source, I get you are just going to have to do a whole lot of bake sales to try to come up with the revenue you need for maintenance and backlog.

I wish LWCF could be used more for maintenance and backlog. Even though it could be, it is not, it has not, and unless we change things it won't be.

For too long we have had people coming back here addressing us dealing with special interest groups, as opposed to simply people.

I think some of your proposals have instituted a new degree of federalism never heard before, which is very refreshing around this place.

Whether they know it or not, many of my Democratic colleagues have become ardent supporters of federalism because of this plan.

This bill involves 80 acres of land controlled by the Forest Service but not in the actual national forest. Over the past 50 years, this land has been used by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, by NASA, by the Naval Research Laboratory, and…

About a decade ago, we tried to just throw money at the situation, a big pile of money that went to the Interior Department, most of which was mismanaged, but it did not solve the problem.

There is no question that decades of misplaced priorities in Congress and the executive have placed our Federal land management agencies in this position.

I think the National Park Service Legacy Act that Congressman Will Hurd has that is a bipartisan bill, one that I am a co-sponsor, that is a companion measure to the Warner bill on the Senate side, is the way to do it.

I think that we can and should do something about this, not just for our legacy parks, but the other units.

There has to be some kind of innovative and creative solution to actually solve the problem.

We have problems. This Committee is hearing testimony because the Department of the Interior manages over 500 million acres of surface land.

the United States can play a huge role in working with our allies to stabilize, geopolitically, this world if we are smart on how we actually do it.

There are a whole lot of other people that benefit from that and maybe they should be asked to help support that at the same time.

I would like to close by urging Congress to consider and pass legislation that would solve these very real problems.

That is where the east-west access becomes critical.

We are going to work with you to see what we can do by April 4.