Washington, D.C – The House of Representatives and Alaskan Congressman Don Young today passed bipartisan legislation aimed at modestly updating the Endangered Species Act (ESA), a law enacted in 1973 to preserve, protect, and recover species. H.R. 4315, the Endangered Species Transparency and Reasonableness Act, which passed the House today by a vote of 233 to 190, would make a number of commonsense improvements and updates to ESA by specifically addressing species recovery and increased transparency by the federal government.

“There is no question that the United States has made significant improvements and advancements in biology and technology since ESA was last renewed more than 25 years ago, but unfortunately our current system does not take advantage of any of that,” said Congressman Don Young. “At the core of ESA are a number of good intentions; however, it currently lacks the 21^st Century innovation needed to update and improve the law for both species conservation and the American people.”

Since enactment in 1973, more than 1,500 U.S. species and sub-species have been listed as threatened or endangered under ESA. During that same time, only 2 percent of these species have been recovered under the Act created with the primary goal of species recovery. H.R. 4315 works to improve these numbers by placing greater emphasis on recovery actions rather than bureaucratic listing actions.   

“Today represents a longstanding push by House Republicans to bring legislative reforms to ESA that foster the science, technology and innovation that has made America successful in other endeavors,” Congressman Young said. “This legislation will give field-tested and empirical data weight when making species listings, and establish a process for state, tribal, and local governments to participate in the process. I believe it’s these types of commonsense reforms that will form a partnership between the federal government and local landowners to encourage species stewardship and remove countless unintended consequences currently associated with ESA.”

The legislation would specifically:

• Require data used by federal agencies for ESA listing decisions to be made publicly available and accessible through the Internet.

• Require the federal government to disclose data to affected states prior to ESA listing decisions, in addition to requiring the “best available scientific and commercial data” used by the federal government to include data provided by states, tribes, and local county governments.

• Require the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to track, report to Congress, and make available online federal taxpayer funds used to respond to ESA lawsuits, the number of employees dedicated to ESA litigation, and attorney’s fees awarded in the course of ESA litigation and settlement agreements.

• Prioritize species protection and protect taxpayer dollars by placing reasonable caps on attorney’s fees to make ESA consistent with existing federal law.

  Alaska, don young, endangered species act, house of representatives, representative