Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, as you know, 2 months ago, the Secretary of the Interior announced that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service would remove gray wolves from the Endangered Species Act list in areas covering the northern Rocky Mountain States and roughly the easternmost one-third of the State of Washington, the eastern quarter of the State of Oregon, and a small piece of Utah. I understand that H.R. 2584 also would exempt from judicial review any final rule issued by the Secretary that delists wolves in the State of Wyoming and the western Great Lakes. So I commend the chairman for your leadership to see that these States are given a chance to succeed in their management of species. As with other decisions, the Secretary of the Interior's May announcement does not resolve the problem for many agricultural areas in States that don't fit neatly within the Fish and Wildlife Service's arbitrarily set geographical boundaries, and it reverses a policy that the Fish and Wildlife Service itself implemented by regulation in 2003 in which wolves were delisted in all of the State of Washington and other areas with appropriate State recovery measures in place. Under the current administration's policy, in my own district in central Washington, wolves will be delisted on the eastern side up to a highway that cuts through a heavy agriculture area. Wolves on one side of the highway will be listed, the other side not. The same is true in Oregon and Utah.…”