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Hearing held on June 19, 2003

Statement of Members:

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JOINT LEGISLATIVE HEARING ON H.R. 2057, ΤΟ PROVIDE FOR A MULTI-AGENCY COOPERATIVE EFFORT ΤΟ ENCOURAGE FURTHER RESEARCH REGARDING THE CAUSES OF CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE AND METHODS TO CONTROL THE FURTHER SPREAD OF THE DISEASE IN DEER AND ELK HERDS, TO MONITOR THE INCIDENCE OF THE DISEASE, TO SUPPORT STATE EFFORTS TO CONTROL THE DISEASE, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES; AND H.R. 2416, TO PROVIDE FOR THE PROTECTION OF PALEONTOLOGICAL RESOURCES ON FEDERAL LANDS, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES.

Thursday, June 19, 2003

U.S. House of Representatives

Subcommittee on Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife
and Oceans, joint with the

Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health
Committee on Resources
Washington, DC

The Subcommittees met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m., in room 1334, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Scott McInnis [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.

Present: Representatives McInnis, Inslee, McGovern, Tom Udall, Mark Udall, Gilchrest, Green, Tancredo, Ryan, Rehberg, Kind, Renzi, Pearce, and McCollum.

Mr. McINNIS. It is getting toward the end of the week, which means that my patience is very short, which means that if you have a cellular phone, take my advice and turn it off. The same thing with pagers.

Put them on vibrate or something else, but I don't want our witnesses being rudely interrupted by somebody's cell phone. So if you would follow that rule, I would appreciate that. This morning we are doing a joint hearing, and what I intend to do if the appropriate members show up at the time that their time slot arrives is to give 10 minutes to the Chairman, and the respective Chairman

of the two subcommittees, and give 10 minutes to the respective Ranking Members.

I also would allow either of those, or any of those four people to reserve the right to yield some of that time, as I intend to yield some to Mr. Green for some brief opening remarks. OK. We will go ahead and begin the hearing.

STATEMENT OF THE HON. SCOTT McINNIS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF COLORADO

Mr. MCINNIS. Today this joint Subcommittee hearing will take its second look in as many years at Federal, State, and local efforts to contain and ultimately eradicate chronic wasting disease. Just over a year ago, Mr. Gilchrest and I, pulled all the best and most knowledgeable minds into the same room to begin the process of developing an integrated and long term vision focused on protecting North America's wild and captive deer and elk populations from this disease.

I would also at this point in time like to leave my remarks, and just openly acknowledge my long time friend, and who I consider one of the leading experts in the country in regards to this particular problem, and that is Russell George, the Director of the State Wildlife for the State of Colorado.

Russ, thank you. I know that you made the effort to come out there today and we appreciate your expertise and your assistance. Now, I am going to submit the rest of my statement for the record, and at this point in time yield to Mr. Green, if Mr. Green has some remarks that he would like to put in the record. [The prepared statements of Mr. McInnis follows:]

Statement of The Honorable Scott McInnis, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Forests and Forest Health, on H.R. 2057

Today this Joint Subcommittee hearing will take its second look in as many years at Federal, state and local efforts to contain and ultimately eradicate Chronic Wasting Disease. Just over a year ago, Mr. Gilchrest and I pulled all of the best and most knowledgeable minds into the same room to begin the process of developing an integrated and long-term vision focused on protecting North America's wild and captive deer and elk populations from this disease.

I think that there were three take home messages from that exhaustive and informative dialogue last year. The first was that our friends in the States are bestequipped to spearhead efforts to stem the spread of CWD, particularly when it comes to managing the disease in wild cervid populations. But that doesn't mean there isn't an important Federal role, which leads to the second policy staple that emerged from last year's hearing. In order to effectively suppress the proliferation of CWD, Federal agriculture and wildlife agencies must pro-actively support the States by providing financial support and technical assistance in the research, management and surveillance of the disease. But in order to support the States in an effective manner, we discovered that the multitude of Federal agencies with a jurisdictional stake in this issue needed to more thoroughly coordinate and prioritize the various overlapping and redundant Federal activities. The need for a more unified Federal response was the third upshot of the hearing. With that understanding, last year I charged all of the relevant agencies to come up with an integrated game-plan so that the Federal-support structure is efficient, effective and responsive to the needs of our friends in the States.

In the year since our hearing, results on the Federal side have been mixed. To its credit, the Departments of Agriculture and Interior have done an exemplary job of assisting the States in testing many thousands of deer and elk samples submitted for CWD screening. These Departments and their subordinate agencies have also done laudable work in bringing urgency and progress on the research front.

Where progress has been less impressive is in formalizing and finalizing the interagency CWD game-plan that I demanded at last year's hearing. After our hearing,

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