May 9, 2007

CONTACT: Allyson Ivins Groff, 202-226-9019

From changes in regulations to poorly developed legal reviews that have left the agency sorely vulnerable to attack in the courts, the evidence of a systematic effort to undermine the law and species protection is quite clear. This is an agency that seems focused on one goal - weakening the law by Administrative fiat and it is doing much of that work in the shadows, shrouded from public view.

For example, we know that the Department has been contemplating, for some time, a major rewrite of regulations to implement that law. We know this because a copy of draft regulations was leaked to the media. As Chairman of the Committee with oversight of this matter, I asked for copies of the same draft regulations, but received no response from the Department. That is, until Monday, two days before this hearing.

That response from Director Dale Hall said, The Department has made no final decision on whether to propose any regulatory changes to the ESA. Yet, the letter includes a chart prepared, ironically, by the Center for Biological Diversity with the Fish and Wildlife Service's editorial notes describing their Acurrent draft proposal.

While Fish and Wildlife has gone to extreme lengths to keep these documents away from the Committee, special interest groups challenging ESA decisions have found it easy enough to get their hands on a version of them.

Just last week, on May 1, 2007, the American Forest Resource Council had to amend a complaint it filed in court on March 7, 2007, citing a regulation that is not even on the books but is rumored to be under consideration - apparently, top secret consideration - at the Interior Department. Just how the timber industry was able to procure the draft regulation is a matter of much speculation.

What is clear, however, is that the timber industry has better access to information from the Bush Administration than the People's Representatives in Congress.

Proposed changes to the regulations are not the only way the Administration seeks to undermine the law. While much attention in recent days has focused on Julie MacDonald, the Inspector General issued a report that shed light on problems that run far deeper than those that she caused and those will be the focus of much of this hearing today.

For all of its talk about faith and religious values, I find it impossible to reconcile that public persona with this Administration's flagrant lack of regard for the work of the Creator's hand. As well, I do not find pushing policies that imperil God's creatures and that place at greater risk of extinction plants that provide life-saving drugs to be in keeping with His grand design.

For me to sit here and suggest that the Department is on a sad and irresponsible mission to undercut species recovery is an understatement. What we are seeing here - if we could actually see behind the cloak of secrecy surrounding the Interior Department - is a complete disregard for the very science that has equipped us to be responsible stewards of this Earth with which we have been blessed.

We must ask ourselves as a Nation, how do we want this government to run the Endangered Species Program - entangled in politics, or enlightened by science?