House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (WA-04) released the following statement regarding announcement of the Administration’s efforts to make administrative changes to the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The Natural Resources Committee has jurisdiction over the ESA:

"The Obama Administration is admitting that the ESA is failing to truly recover endangered species while it frequently hamstrings jobs and economic prosperity. The Act hasn’t been reauthorized in over twenty years, since 1988, and it’s clearly in need of improvement. However, the Obama Administration appears to purposefully be launching a substantial, unilateral rewrite of regulations. Instead of choosing to exercise bureaucratic fiat, the Obama Administration should sit down and work with impacted communities and their elected representatives in Congress to enact improvements to the law that will actually bring species to recovery, end the debilitating costly lawsuits, and utilize strong science to guide decisions in order to protect jobs and the livelihoods of rural Americans."

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