U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) grilled U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) Director Martha Williams during an Environmental and Public Works (EPW) Committee hearing on the agency’s failure to respond to Wyoming’s grizzly bear delisting petition and its blatant overreach on wolf management.
During her time, Lummis questioned Director Williams about the agency’s unlawful delay in responding to the State of Wyoming’s petition to establish grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem as a distinct population segment and remove it from the endangered species list.
“You said you will follow the law and the science, but let’s talk about grizzly delisting because you’re doing neither. In January 2022, two and a half years ago, the state of Wyoming filed a petition with Fish and Wildlife Services to establish grizzly bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem as a distinct population segment that is neither threatened nor endangered and to remove it from the endangered species list,” said Lummis. “By law, your agency is required to make a determination within 12 months of receiving the application. We are now two and a half years out from when the petition was submitted and your agency has stated you won’t have a decision until July. Further, the science established by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decades ago proves that the grizzly has recovered and is way over population criteria.”
Lummis also questioned the wisdom of the agency’s hiring of a third-party “mediator” to discuss how wolves and people can coexist while simultaneously establishing a “National Recovery Plan” for wolves already under state jurisdiction.
Last month, Senator Lummis led Senators Pete Ricketts (R-NE) and Dan Sullivan (R-AK) in introducing Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolutions to overturn the Biden administration’s reversal of key reforms to the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by the Trump administration that increased stakeholder engagement, defined critical habitat and ensured species recovery plans were effective.
