FreedomWorks Sends Letter to Congress Supporting H.R. 764

Chairman Westerman and Ranking Member Grijalva,

On behalf of FreedomWorks’ activist community, I am writing in support of H.R. 764, the Trust the Science Act, introduced by Rep. Lauren Boebert (CO-03). We are encouraged that the House Natural Resources Committee will have a legislative hearing on March 23, 2023 on this bill. The Trust the Science Act is an important and commonsense step to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list. This legislation is a common sense step to ensure that specialists who know how to properly manage endangered and threatened wildlife are empowered to make decisions and prevent activist judges from interfering on state and local issues.

Numerous environmental groups, including the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) and the Center for Biological Diversity, have fought to keep the gray wolf on the endangered species list. These groups and others have also lobbied the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to keep the gray wolf listed despite the service stating in 2021 that the gray wolf’s population had recovered beyond the levels that Congress had laid out in the Endangered Species Act. In 2022, environmental groups proposed converting over 190,000 square miles of public lands across 11 western U.S. states into a sanctuary for gray wolves and other such animals. That amount of land is 16 percent of the total land mass of those 11 states and would take up roughly 34 percent of federal land in the West. These groups also proposed that the federal government reduce the grazing permits it grants to ranchers for use of select parts of federal lands and even suggested the federal government offer buyouts to ranchers to incentivize them to leave federal lands. These groups want to severely limit the economic opportunities of hard working Americans who live and depend on federal lands for their livelihoods.

In 2022, a federal judge in Northern California overturned a Trump administration rule giving control of gray wolf population management in the lower 48 states to state governments. H.R. 764 would overturnthis egregious example of judicial overreach and restore sanity to our nation’s wildlife management policy. States should be empowered to develop policies that best fit their specific needs and not be subjected to a one-size-fits-all policy that could hinder and hamstring local decision-makers. The Committee on Natural Resources should favorably report this bill to the House floor for full consideration by the U.S. House.

Sincerely,

Adam Brandon

President, FreedomWorks