Renewed Effort In Congress To Remove Wolves From ESA Protections

A bipartisan effort has been launched in the U.S. Senate to not only end Endangered Species Act protections for wolves in Wyoming and the Great Lakes region, but to also prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from addressing lead poisoning related to fishing gear, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.

The organization said that Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, has joined forces with Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, to introduce legislation that would accomplish those two goals.

In exchange the legislation would reauthorize several conservation programs, like the North America Wetlands Conservation Act — a procedural action by Congress that has no real-world impact on funding levels, the center said in a release.

Sen. Barrasso, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has sponsored or cosponsored eight bills attacking the Endangered Species Act since 2015 and voted against the Act nearly a dozen times since 2011.

“Killing wolves and poisoning lakes and rivers with lead pollution does not help wildlife, but will severely tarnish Senator Cardin’s conservation legacy,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Why a Democrat like Cardin would accept this terribly lopsided deal at the same time the Trump administration is attempting to destroy 40 years of environmental protections is simply stupefying.”

The “Hunting Heritage and Environmental Legacy Preservation for Wildlife Act,’’ or “HELP” Wildlife Act, contains multiple conservation programs, including the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act, the Chesapeake Bay Program and the North America Wetlands Conservation Act. However, reauthorization has no bearing on whether Congress ultimately allocates funding to a program in a given year. According to the Congressional Budget Office, more than 260 major laws have had their authorizations expire and continue to receive funding. These programs constitute over half of the non-defense budget each year.

“This legislation won’t help conservation on the ground anywhere — not a single animal or plant will benefit from this horrible legislation,” said Mr. Hartl. “Sadly Cardin is trading killing thousands of wolves for a largely symbolic effort to help Chesapeake Bay. This is a disaster.”

Officials at the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Trust, however, see the legislation as a boon because it would reauthorize programs key to habitat conservation.

"What makes this effort different from sportsmen’s packages of the more recent past is that, right from the outset, it deals with meaningful conservation priorities by reauthorizing and instituting programs that will actually enhance fish and wildlife populations, habitat, and access,” says Whit Fosburgh, president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “We applaud Sen. Barrasso, Sen. Cardin, Sen. Boozman, Sen. Klobuchar, Sen. Capito, and Sen. Baldwin for their leadership and recognition of what American hunters and anglers value.”

The legislation is not without controversy, the group acknowledges, but the provision to delist gray wolves in Wyoming and the Great Lakes has bipartisan support from lawmakers and has been recommended by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“When we take recovered species off the list, we strengthen the Endangered Species Act by making truly endangered species a priority—species shouldn’t stay on the list forever,” said Mr. Fosburgh. “We trust in state fish and wildlife agencies to manage wildlife, and science indicates this is the next step for wolves.”