The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association highlighted delisting efforts and changes to the Endangered Species Act during last week’s legislative conference. We caught up with Garrett Edmonds with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association to learn about these efforts.
Edmonds said, “The Pet and Livestock Protection Act. Back in December, the House passed this legislation to reinstate the gray wolf delisting rule. We are big supporters of this legislation. You know, going back, multiple administrations now, spanning Democrats and Republicans, there have been five separate attempts to delist the gray wolf. And what we’ve found is each time that moves through, when the Fish and Wildlife Service follow the sound science that’s out there that the gray wolf has recovered, we see time and time again environmental activist groups take to the courts to basically take the teeth out of the agency and what ability they have to delist. And so what we’ve told our producers across the country, you may not have gray wolves. There are certain parts of the country that most certainly do have gray wolves.”
“But this is an issue that we all need to band together on to tell Congress that we wouldn’t normally ask you to get into species management, but this is an area where we have to have it. And it expands on the second point that I had already kind of made was lawfare with ESA listings is nothing new. This is why also last week we were pushing really hard to get the ESA Amendments Act of 2025 passed, which would reform the ESA. Essentially, the Endangered Species Act was a very noble piece of legislation and what it set out to do. But once a species seems to find their way on the list, they never seem to find its way off. So we need to build back towards recovery, get back to what the legislation was intended to do,” said Edmonds.
Audio Reporting by Dale Sandlin for Southeast AgNet.