The Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mr. MORAN. Madam President, today--in fact, in a few minutes from now--the Senate will act in an effort to protect farmers, ranchers, and producers from the unnecessary consequences of listing the lesser prairie-chicken.

Even as I say the words, it brings back so many instances in which we have had this conversation on the Senate floor, going back to my earliest days in the Senate. This issue has been with us now for a long number of years.

Range-wide studies over the last decade have shown that conservation efforts are helping bird populations in the five habitat States, including Kansas. So the lesser prairie-chicken is a native bird to five States in our part of the country, and its populations are important to us in Kansas and to those other States and to the country.

What strikes me is that this administration claims that American agriculture is at the heart of needing to list the lesser prairie- chicken as either an endangered species or as a threatened species because agriculture is causing harm to the populations.

A quote from the rule states:

Grazing by domestic livestock is not inherently detrimental to lesser prairie-chicken management and, in many cases, is needed to maintain appropriate vegetative structure.

That is a pretty good paragraph to indicate the value of production agriculture when it comes to the well-being of the lesser prairie- chicken.

In other words, what that is saying is that agricultural management practices and voluntary conservation practices of grasslands, including grazing by ranchers, improve--improve--their habitat.

Listing the bird as a threatened or endangered species is not the answer. Plain and simple, we need more rainfall. We need moisture in Kansas and in other States in the West. We need more rainfall, not more regulations.

I conclude here by saying that farmers and ranchers have always been and will always be the original conservationists. Their livelihoods depend on the continued conservation efforts of the soil and water they use to produce crops and raise livestock. I am confident there are ways to conserve the species without hindering economic opportunity in rural communities, and I will continue to push for what Kansans have been pursuing for years now--voluntary solutions.

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