Big Cats and Rare Canids Act of 2007

I usually think of myself as somewhat ignorant of what happens in Washington DC--especially when you consider that so many bills are introduced by our elected representatives. So, after researching the effect of the Congolese civil war on the gorillas, elephants and other protected or threatened animals within Virunga National Park, I decided to pick a bill related to the subject of animal protection, and then understand it in the context of the work of one of the committees dealing with it. I confess that I also chose the bill because of the catchiness of its name--the Great Cats and Rare Canids Act of 2007. Along the way, I found myself learning tons of things I didn't know about our world, the Senate and the various species of wild cats and dogs in the world.

The Bill and Its Context

One useful tracker of bills in Congress is GovTrack.us. Well, on March 29, 2007 S. 1033 was introduced, sponsored by Sen. Joe Liberman (I-CT) and co-sponsored by a Democrat, two Republicans and the Senate's other Independent. Since bills like this have to pass both houses, an identical version of the bill was introduced into the House, HR 1464, on March 9, 2007. Called the "Big Cats and Rare Canids Act of 2007," the bill seeks to assist in the conservation of seven species of rare felids and six of rare canids by providing $5,000,000 per year for conservation efforts.

The bill and the amount didn't just come from nowhere. It had already been introduced late in the 108th Congress (July 2004) and early in the 109th Congress (April 2005) but made little progress. Thus, this is the third time around for the bill, and from the looks of the pace at which the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is getting its work done, it will die again in committee this year. The purpose of this and the next essay, however, is to urge you to support it--by letting committee members know of your interest. All bills which have not been signed into law at the end of a particular Congress (each goes from Jan of the odd-numbered year to Dec. of the even-numbered year; we are now in the 110th Congress).

Congress has been actively involved in protecting various species of rare or endangered animals for some time. For example, in 1988 Congress passed, and President Reagan signed, the African Elephant Conservation Act. This Act arose in the context of an "alarming" decline in African elephants since the 1970s caused primarily by a large illegal trade in African elephant ivory. This Act established a fund to support efforts to protect these elephants and also set up a regime to punish, with criminal and civil penalties, violations of the Act. Then, in 1994, Congress went one step further, passing the Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Act of 1994. Finally, a few years later, Congress passed the Asian Elephant Conservation Act of 1997. A Multinational Species Conservation Fund ("MSCF") was set up to fund these efforts. Here is a report detailing the actual appropriations from that fund. The worrisome thing, for supporters of the Big Cats Act must be that the appropriations for African elephants, Tiger and Rhinos and Asian elephants went down from FY 2004 ($1,383,000) to FY 2007 ($990,000 requested)--about 40 percent. The MSCF was reauthorized in 2007 for another five years, as was the Asian Elephant Act. Let's look at the Senate Committee that takes the first crack at these acts.

In the Senate

The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works consists of 19 Senators (pictures here). Three of the Senator's pictures are missing, but I was interested in seing that the only things listed about the Senators were his/her name, party, birthday and religion. What does religion have to do with this?? But, interestingly enough, as you follow up on religion, I saw the two bodies most strongly represented among the committee were Jews and Presbyterians. I suppose one could have expected the former, but the latter?? You have the problem of the Presbyterian Church in a nutshell here. The denomination officially is a "liberal" Protestant Church, supporting women's right to choose and a whole host of "modernist" things, but the three of the Presbyterian guys on the committee are Republicans, with James Inhofe, one of the most radically conservative Republicans in the Senate, as the Ranking Member of the committee. All the Presbyterians are from Southern or border states; the "liberal" part of the Church comes from the Northeast and Upper Midwest.

I was fascinated by the committee workload in the first 13 1/2 months of this Congress. It has 123 bills that originated in the committee that are still pending there, and it is considering 32 bills that have already been passed by the House and sent over to it. Only nine of its bills have been passed to date by both chambers and signed by the President. But a closer look at these passed bills gives one pause. Six of the nine bills consist of the naming of federal courthouses (indeed, that seems to be a big part of their workload--naming buildings). Did you know, for example, that HR 342, signed by the President a few months ago, designated the US courthouse at 555 Independence Street in Cape Girardeau, MO as the "Rush Hudson Limbaugh, Sr. United States Courthouse"? This is not the Rush on the radio, but his grandfather, who was a distinguished MO lawyer until his death at age 104 in 1996.

Thus, our committee is very good at naming federal courthouses. Two of the remaining pieces of legislation it has passed, and which have been signed into law, are the reauthorization of the Asian Elephant Act and Multinational Species Conservation Fund. They didn't need much creativity here, either. All the needed to do was to strike out 2000-2006 and add 2007-2012 in the Act, besides giving the Administrator a slightly larger chunk of money to pay for staffing the effort. The only bill signed by the President that has come from through this committee in 13 1/2 months that was not a reauthorization or a naming of a federal courthouse was the "Methamphetamine Remediation Research Act of 2008 (HR 365)." This passed by unanimous consent of the Senate.

So far, then, any third grader could have sat on this committee. Indeed, third graders might do better than some of its members. For example, Sen. Hillary Clinton is on the committee, but her presence on the committee and her votes in the Senate have been quite scanty of late. After all, if you are courting superdelegates, you are not too concerned about naming federal courthouses. Then, next to her in alphabetical order is Sen. Larry Craig. Ever since Methodist Larry had his unfortunate incident in the Minneapolis men's room in June and was "outed" in August, he has missed far too many votes. Indeed, 90% of his colleagues misssed about 10 percent or fewer votes from Sept. - Dec. 2007. Larry, however, missed almost 25% of his votes in this period. He probably was the most "absent" Senator at this time. And, that is good news for another committee member who also had trouble keeping his sexual proclivities in check, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA). Indeed, Sen. Vitter probably can thank Sen. Craig for taking him off the front page of the Senate follies. No wonder it is challenging for the entire committee to get a lot of good work done...

Conclusion

But all of this is just history and context. The next essay describes the Great Cats and Rare Canids Act of 2007.

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