Wyomings Brasso hasnt a clue what he is doing… except managing resources for special interest groups! he wants to do what hes done to Wyoming Wolves to the Endangered Species act…. GUT IT!
On May 10, 2017, Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW), led a committee oversight hearing called, “Conservation, Consultation and Capacity: State Views on the Need to Modernize the Endangered Species Act.” Green groups decry Barrasso’s desire to “modernize” the Endangered Species Act (ESA) as a gross abandonment of the federal government’s responsibility to imperiled species and their habitats.
Barrasso also held a prior hearing in February called, “Oversight: Modernization of the Endangered Species Act.” Regarding that hearing, Amy Atwood, Endangered Species Legal Director and Senior Attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity (the Center), warned of “Republican-led attempts to weaken [the Endangered Species Act] in the name of ‘modernization.’” According to data gathered by the Center, Barrasso has sponsored eight legislative attacks on the ESA in the past two years and has voted against the ESA 11 times since 2011.
Erik Molvar, Executive Director of the Western Watersheds Project, described Barrasso’s efforts as being “about fundamentally gutting one of our nation’s most important bedrock conservation laws and replacing science-based decision-making with political horse-trading that sells out our endangered wildlife.”
The recent hearing focused solely on the feedback of state wildlife officials, including Nick Wiley, Executive Director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and President of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA), Larry Voyles, Director of the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) and the former AFWA President, and Janet Coit, Director of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (RIDEM).
In the February hearing, Barrasso stated the ESA “is not working today.” In the May hearing, Barrasso weighed in with this announcement:
In recent years, state governments and their state fish and wildlife agencies have increasingly voiced concerns that the Endangered Species Act isn’t living up to its conservation potential. So have counties, wildlife managers, home builders, construction companies, farmers and ranchers, and other stakeholders.
In contrast, the Center pointed out in a press release, “The ESA has been more than 99 percent effective at saving species under its protection from extinction and has put hundreds more on the road to recovery.” The humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) and bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) are among those recovered species and a 2015 poll reveals 90 percent of Americans support the ESA as is. The Center has taken the lead in protecting hundreds of endangered species and their habitats through successful lawsuits against the federal government.