Duffy’s Legislation to Delist the Gray Wolf Passes House
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Wisconsin Congressman Sean Duffy, Chairman of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing & Insurance, today spoke on the House floor in support of his legislation to delist the gray wolf. The Manage Our Wolves Act then passed the House in a bipartisan manner, 196-180.
Click HERE or the image below for his entire remarks.
Below are excerpts of Congressman Duffy’s remarks:
“This is a bill that’s bipartisan and a time where I don’t think we see a lot of bipartisanship. And I think the reason you see Democrats and Republicans coming together, and actually the house and senate coming together on this bill, is because if you live in the northern part of the United States, you know, Great Lakes and west, you understand that the wolves are a huge problem. And that’s why you’ve seen Democrat senators from this region, Democrat Congressmen from this region and Republicans, too, standing together to say, ‘hey, listen, we have to manage these wolves.’
“And so if you live in the suburbs of Washington DC, it’s not a problem. If you live in Madison, Wisconsin, it’s not really a problem. You can make the argument that, the pretty little puppy of the wolf, it’s so pretty and beautiful and we have to protect it. We did protect it. We put it on the endangered species list. [Un]like a lot of government programs, this one worked. And we have protected them and allowed them to recover. We have three times as many gray wolf as was projected to be necessary to take them off the endangered species list.
“We’re coming to hunting season in Wisconsin right now, so a lot of us Wisconsinites put on their blaze orange and get their guns and go out to the woods and hunt deer. I have never seen a picture of Barack Obama in blaze orange and his rifle to go out and hunt deer. Not a great outdoorsman, I don’t think. But Barack Obama’s administration was the one to first to take the gray wolf off the endangered species list. And Donald Trump, too, agrees. Donald Trump and Barack Obama agree on an issue? They do on gray wolves!
“If you live in Wisconsin, especially northern Wisconsin, it might be necessary for us to actually manage this population because it’s good for the environment. It’s good for the wolves. It’s good for the cattle. It’s actually really good for our deer population. And so I just think this just makes common sense.”
“Frankly, I believe that our states are far more in tuned in understanding the ecosystem of their state than Bureaucrats in Washington.”
“So I would far rather empower Wisconsin and my good friend, Collin Peterson from Minnesota. Let Minnesota manage the populations because they understand that ecosystem better. I would encourage all of my colleagues to join Barack Obama, and join Donald Trump, and join a few members of Congress from Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and Washington and senators as well, to allow us to successfully manage our gray wolf population which allows for a healthier ecosystem.”
Background:
Management of these gray wolves was transferred from the state to the federal level following two 2014 U.S. District Court decisions that reinstated gray wolves under the protections of the Endangered Species Act. These designations leave farmers and ranchers in those states without a legal avenue to protect their livestock from wolves.
Click HERE to read H.R. 6784, the Manage Our Wolves Act.
