Natural Resources sets review of ESA, Gulf of America bills
The House panel will also discuss legislation to delist the gray wolf.
A House Natural Resources subcommittee on Tuesday will discuss four Republican bills, including one to overhaul the Endangered Species Act and another renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
The hearing before the Water, Fisheries and Wildlife Subcommittee is set to be a partisan throwdown as Democrats are likely to rip full committee Chair Bruce Westerman’s H.R. 1897, the "ESA Amendments Act of 2025," which contains troves of reforms Republicans have sought for decades. Democrats warned last year that the Arkansas Republican's bill would set myriad species on a glide path toward extinction.
Democrats are also poised to lampoon Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s H.R. 276, the "Gulf of America Act of 2025," to rename the body of water in statute, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to do so on his first day in office.
Westerman’s ESA reform bill is largely a redux of last year’s plan under the same name. In releasing the measure, he argued that the ESA "has been warped by decades of radical environmental litigation into a weapon instead of a tool."
While the bill would not change listing decisions being made strictly according to scientific evidence, it would require an economic impact analysis to accompany any decision to list a species as endangered or threatened. That currently comes into play only during the protection of critical habitat.
ESA advocates warn that the economic impact studies could poison the well of public opinion against protecting endangered species.
The bill would also raise the bar for “jeopardy” in consultations between state wildlife agencies and the federal government. Advocates warn the language would gut the current consultation process that prohibits the federal government from taking actions that would harm endangered species.
The current standard for ESA consultation requires that federal actions are “not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of a listed species or result in the destruction or adverse modification of designated critical habitat.”
Westerman’s legislation would raise that bar and narrow the jeopardy finding to only the specific action the government is considering, requiring jeopardy to be "reasonably certain to be caused by the action are likely to result in the action itself causing such jeopardy."
"This bill would totally upend the consultation process, which has been the cornerstone of American species protection for 50 year,” said Ellen Richmond, a senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife.
"The bill also says that wildlife agencies can only make those jeopardy findings if the action they’re actually considering right now would cause the jeopardy,” Richmond said.
"Instead of looking at the whole picture, this bill would isolate a tiny slice of harm and confine the required findings to just that tiny slice … therefore [the agency] is much less likely to find that the action it’s considering would cause jeopardy to the species.”
A host of other provisions in the legislation worry Democrats and advocates alike. One would allow states to take steps with their own recovery efforts for threatened species; another attempts to thwart litigation in a pattern GOP detractors call "sue and settle."
Another provision seems targeted at a since-withdrawn Biden-era rulemaking that proposed slower speeds for certain vessels to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
'It’s our gulf'
The Gulf of America bill would require "Any reference in a law, map, regulation, document, paper, or other record of the United States to the Gulf of Mexico shall be deemed to be a reference to the ‘Gulf of America.’”
“It’s our gulf,” Greene said in a statement after introducing the bill. “The rightful name is the Gulf of America and it’s what the entire world should refer to it as.”
Democrats have largely rolled their eyes at the effort to rename the Gulf. Committee ranking member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) has called Trump’s effort to change the name “bonkers.”
Consideration of the bill will also allow Democrats an opportunity to accuse Republicans of pursuing messaging bills and avoiding holding hearings about the administration’s rapid cutting of the federal government as they did at a hearing several weeks ago. Democrats are eager to talk about the administration’s Department of Government Efficiency headed by Elon Musk.
Gray wolves
The panel will take up Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-Colo.) H.R. 845, the "Pet and Livestock Protection Act," which would delist the gray wolf under the Endangered Species Act and prevent courts from overturning that decision.
Republicans have long sought to delist the gray wolf after the Trump administration did so in 2020. The listing was reinstated in 2022.
The bill is supported by a number of livestock groups, who claim the wolves frequently predate their livestock. Republicans have also recently used graphic imagery of pets killed by wolves to push for the delisting.
One Democratic bill will be taken up during the hearing: Rep. Debbie Dingell's H.R. 1917, the “Great Lakes Mass Marking Program Act of 2025," which would create a program for the marking of fish in hatcheries in the Great Lakes. It has bipartisan support.
Schedule: The hearing is Tuesday, March 25, at 10:15 a.m. in 1324 Longworth and via webcast.
Witnesses: TBA.
By: Garrett Downs
Source: E&E Daily
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