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ENDANGERED SPECIES: GOP senators reintroduce bills cracking down on lawsuits, wolf policy 

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Republican senators are supporting a series of bills that would make it harder for the Fish and Wildlife Service to resolve Endangered Species Act lawsuits and would force the agency to provide more information on proposed protections for Mexican wolves.

Two of the three ESA bills introduced Tuesday were from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the majority whip.

The “Endangered Species Act Settlement Reform Act,” S. 375, would require the Interior Department to provide public notification of when ESA suits, often from environmental groups, are filed and would set a lower standard for when outside groups, such as interested businesses, can intervene.

Introduced by Cornyn in both 2013 and 2015, the legislation also seeks to require judges to obtain the consent of affected local governments before approving settlements and would block litigants from obtaining legal payments.

“By giving states, counties, and local landowners a seat at the table, this bill will bring some much-needed transparency to the ESA settlement process,” the majority whip said in a news release. “This will ensure Washington bureaucrats can’t run roughshod over Texas landowners and job creators.”

Cornyn also reintroduced the “21st Century Endangered Species Transparency Act,” S. 376, which would require the secretaries of the Interior and Commerce, who jointly implement the ESA, to publish any scientific and commercial data online that are used for adding or removing animals and plants from the endangered or threatened species lists. But the bill would also prohibit the posting of landowners’ “personal information.”

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) resurrected the “Mexican Gray Wolf Recovery Plan Act” as well.

The bill, S. 368, seeks to shape the forthcoming update to the species’s three-decade-old recovery plan.

The revision is required by December as a condition of a settlement the Obama administration struck last year with conservation groups and some states to resolve a series of lawsuits related to the recovery program for the wolf subspecies, one of the most endangered mammals in North America (Greenwire, April 27, 2016).

Flake’s legislation would require FWS to set “an enforceable maximum population of the Mexican gray wolf” within a range below the current boundary line of Interstate 40 that is acceptable to ranchers, landowners, recreation interests and county governments in Arizona and New Mexico — the only two states in which the wolf is currently found.

Regulators would be require to describe “acceptable and unacceptable impacts on wild game, livestock and recreation” in those states. It also would set a process for state wildlife officials to assume authority of the recovery effort if they find FWS is in noncompliance with the revised recovery plan and would make them eligible for federal grant funding.

“The federal government’s outdated management of Mexican gray wolf populations is harming ranchers and our state’s rural communities,” said Flake, who is up for re-election in 2018. “This bill will ease the burdens on rural Arizonans by enhancing local stakeholder participation and state involvement in the recovery process.”

The sole co-sponsor of the bill is Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who also backed the legislation last Congress.

Source: ENDANGERED SPECIES: GOP senators reintroduce bills cracking down on lawsuits, wolf policy — Thursday, February 16, 2017 — www.eenews.net

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