For Immediate Release

March 28, 2007

REP. DICKS WARNS INTERIOR DEPARTMENT
NOT TO ALTER ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The chairman of a House appropriations subcommittee today warned the Interior Department that it should seek approval in Congress -- rather than issuing new legal interpretations – if it attempts to make profound changes to the Endangered Species Act.

                In the wake of media reports about a confidential department plan to alter significantly the way it protects threatened and endangered species and their habitat, U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), chairman of the House Interior  and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, told the Director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service “If you are going to make comprehensive changes to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that could undermine and weaken how the law is enforced you are going to have to come to Congress.”

                Dicks told the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall that he was particularly concerned about the impact of a new ESA policy that would change the definition of the “range” of a particular species to refer primarily to the area where a species currently exists, rather than to the entire range that was inhabited by that species.  This interpretation, based on a March 16th opinion of the Interior Department Solicitor, could substantially alter the number of species protected as well as the level of protection, the congressman said.

                “I worry that it could create a perverse incentive for landowners, for example, to assure that there was no threatened species or habitat on their land in order to argue that their land is no longer part of the ‘current range’ of that species and thus should not be subject to protection,” Rep. Dicks stated in the subcommittee hearing today.

                Dicks told the USFWS Director and Interior Solicitor David L. Bernhardt that he disagreed with the department’s new interpretation of the law, and he warned both that these and other proposals that could weaken the protections of the Endangered Species Act must necessarily be considered by Congress.

Home >> Newsroom >> Press Releases