Modernization of ESA a Must

Public Lands Council Executive Director Dustin Van Liew says one of PLC’s highest legislative priorities this year is the modernization of the Endangered Species Act.
Van Liew: “Our industry believes that it is high time to modernization the Endangered Species Act to bring some solutions forward that would end what we see now as lawsuits driving implementation of the Endangered Species Act. It has so many profound negative impacts on private property owners and federal land ranchers and many industries across the West that we are part of a broad base coalition to begin to move modernizing amendments or provision through to bring the ESA into the 21st Century. So that states are empowered to manage for wildlife as opposed to federal bureaucrats in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. So that the data that they are relying on to make these decision is open and available to the public and scientifically valid — as in peer-reviewed through the Land Grant Universities. To put some limits on how litigation can impact those decisions and end back door settlements with really radical groups that are abusing the legal system in driving their view of how private and public lands should be managed through the ESA.”