Newhouse and Endangered Species Act
I'm Bob Larson. Efforts to bring more transparency to the Endangered Species Act is getting plenty of attention in the U.S. House of Representatives' Natural Resources Committee thanks to Sunnyside Representative Dan Newhouse.
His bill aims to greatly improve the delisting program and the relationship between agencies ...
DAN NEWHOUSE ... "We have, as you know, a couple of different things going on in North-Central Washington, certainly with the wolves, also with the grizzly bears. Determinations have been made preliminarily to reintroduce, and the put reintroduce in quotation marks, grizzly to the North Cascades. We'd like to see the data and the information that have been used to make that determination."
Newhouse says the National Parks Service and Fish and Wildlife released a plan earlier this year to grow a grizzly population that hasn't been seen in 21 years ...
DAN NEWHOUSE ... "Yeah, I think '96, that's right, was the last sighting. So, is it truly to join an existing population? Maybe there's something we haven't not been made aware of."
I asked Newhouse, if Grizzlies wanted to be here, couldn't they just walk across the border from British Columbia?
DAN NEWHOUSE ... "Well there you go, see there, exactly right. There's a natural movement of animals, no matter what species, dependent on the conduciveness of the area. If it was an ideal habitat, you would think that they would have come south."
His bill would amend the ESA to require federal agencies available data before any species is listed as threatened or endangered, including information from affected states, tribes, and local governments.
Newhouse says federal agencies are not currently required to share data and overlook local conservation plans far too often.
