On the recordJuly 7, 2015
I thank the gentleman. I appreciate the gentleman's comments. I do have some gray wolves in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and other places that we will be happy to ship to you if you like. In fact, we didn't have any in Idaho until Fish and Wildlife Service decided that they were going to reintroduce them in Idaho. When you say the minimal take that it has on cattle, wildlife, and other types of things, there were gray wolves in Idaho that one sheep rancher lost over 300 head of sheep in one night to some wolves. That ends his business, essentially. So it is not a minimal take. If you look at the calf-to-cow ratio of elk and deer in Idaho, the numbers have been down substantially, particularly with elk because, guess what, they like elk, even though we were told that they will go after deer and not elk. Wolves, I guess, like elk better than they do deer. The gentleman says we need to depend on science, not Congress. Congress never delisted a species. We didn't delist the gray wolves in Idaho and Montana. It was the Fish and Wildlife Service using science. When you say the gray wolves have not recovered, where is your science? Where do you get that? Where does that statement come from? Fish and Wildlife Service that has done the investigations said yes, they have. So do we just not trust them? It is you people proposing this amendment that are going against science. We are just trying to make sure that the science is protected, and politics doesn't enter.…
