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Source: Congress.gov
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The committee will come to order. The chair notes the presence of a quorum pursuant to committee rules. Members of the committee may submit written opening statements for the record, ask that members may revise and extend their remarks on the bills to be considered at this markup, and have those remarks included in the record. Without objection? So ordered. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare recess of the committee at any time. Pursuant to Committee Rule 3I, the Chair announces that I may postpone further proceedings today on the question of approving any measure or matter or adopting an amendment on which a recorded vote is ordered. I now recognize myself for an opening statement. Good morning and thank you again for joining us for this full committee markup. Before we begin, I do want to recognize that this is our first full committee activity here in D.C. since Congressman Grijalva's passing. His memory will live on in the work that we do here, and I'm grateful to have served with him for so many years on the dais. I along with many others on the committee were able to go out to Tucson for the beautiful service that they have for Representative Grijalva. And before we get into the business today, I just want to take a brief moment of silence to remember his legacy and his family. We have a robust lineup of legislation starting with two bills we're considering under regular order. Our first regular order bill, Congresswoman Greene's Gulf of America Act of 2025, codifies President Trump's executive order to restore names that honor American greatness. It permanently renames the area formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. This legislation will ensure uniformity and implementation of the new name across government documents and maps. I thank Congresswoman Greene for her quick work in introducing the bill in the House.
Second, we will consider Congresswoman Boebert's Pet and Livestock Protection Act of 2025. This legislation is a product of collaborative efforts of Congresswoman Boebert and Congressman Tiffany and their longstanding commitment to delisting the gray wolf from the threatened and endangered species list. The Endangered Species Act was never meant to keep species listed forever, as I've said before, stuck in Hotel California where they can check in but never leave. This bill rightly returns wolf management back to the states and all the lower 48 states, empowering local and privately led species conservation. Modernizing the Endangered Species Act and returning management back to the state level has been a priority of mine as chairman of the committee. Last year marked more than 50 years since the ESA was originally enacted. In that time, the federal government has lost its way when it comes to species management. The S.A. was meant to identify wildlife most at risk, implement a recovery plan, and delist the species once it no longer needs protection. With a dismal 3% success rate of recovered species, it's time to switch up the plays and run a playbook that wins. We cannot continue to run a game plan that allows environmental groups to hijack federal regulations not to protect species but to file lawsuits and to line their own pockets. We need to run a play that gives species management back to those who know it best, which are the state and local communities where these species exist. As we've seen in the hearings on today's legislation, local communities surrounded by the gray wolf live with startling consequences. Witnesses shared personal stories and images of cattle and family pets killed by the gray wolf. These stories are plentiful like wolf populations themselves and putting a chilling face to the costly consequences of America's failure to delist recovered species. And as a gesture to representative Huffman I know we agree that the endangered species list has been very successful in presenting extinction which that's a good thing but I think we can do more with the ESA in accomplishing its purpose of actually recovering species
And I hope we can work together to figure out how to make the recovery efforts better and to have better results going forward than what we've had in the past. Congresswoman Boebert's Pet and Livestock Protection Act brings ESA back to its original intent and restores common sense to species management. The gray wolf is recovered. and it's time we treat it as such. And that's not just me saying it's recovered. The Fish and Wildlife Service has said it's recovered, but it's still, they've been unable to take it off of the list. In addition to the regular order bills, we will call up seven additional measures that minority and majority staff have worked on and reached bipartisan agreement. each of these bills represents common sense solutions to problems our constituents face such as returning power to states streamlining processes and reducing red tape i look forward to our discussions on these issues today and i yield back the balance of my time and now recognize ranking member huffman for any opening statement that he may have Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a quick point of correction for your reference to the body of water formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico. It's still the Gulf of Mexico. It has been for a couple hundred years, and I assure you it will continue to be in most of the reality based world, no matter how much theater we bring to this in this committee. I do appreciate your kind words about Chairman Grijalva. And look, we know Chairman Grijalva was a fighter.
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