Statement of Administration Policy: H.R. 1675 - National Wildlife Refuge Improvement Act

(House)
(Rep. Young (R) AK and 27 cosponsors)

If H.R. 1675, as reported by the Rules Committee (the Young substitute amendment), is presented to the President in its current form, the Secretary of the Interior will recommend that he veto the bill.

H.R. 1675, as reported by Rules Committee (the Young substitute amendment), would greatly weaken the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's ability to protect the National Wildlife Refuge System from harmful activities. The Young substitute amendment does not address many of the bill's fundamental problems and creates significant new problems by:

— Eliminating consideration of the "public interest" in opening wildlife refuges to recreational interests.

— Establishing an unneeded exemption process to facilitate expanded military use of refuge lands, despite no showing that military needs are not currently being accommodated.

— Calling into question the validity of existing reserved water rights of individual refuges and thus undermining the ability of the Service to provide suitable habitat for the species on such refuges.

— Allowing some present and future refuges to be transferred to the States as "coordination areas" to be managed free from the provisions of refuge law.

— Restricting the needed expansion of the System by imposing new limits on the use of the Land and Water Conservation Fund monies for refuge acquisition.

— Elevating certain public uses of refuges, including hunting and trapping, into purposes of the System.

— Compromising the process for determining whether certain recreational uses are compatible with refuge purposes and should be allowed at any given refuge.

— Waiving refuge law to allow the dumping of chemicals into aquatic habitats on refuges in order to kill certain nuisance species.