Nicholas Begich: Vague Legislation Language Paralyzes Marine Development In Alaska

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During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing before the Congressional recess, Rep. Nicholas Begich (R-AK) asked Principal Deputy Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Justin Shirley about the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Transcript

00:00The Chair now recognizes Mr. Begich for five minutes of questions.

00:04Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Shirley, Alaska's 6,600 mile coastline and vast marine ecosystems

00:12place us squarely at the intersection of conservation and development. But under the

00:16current Marine Mammal Protection Act, projects crucial to Alaska like marine highway routes,

00:21harbor expansions, and resource exploration are often paralyzed by vague terms like harassment

00:27and negligible impact. Can you walk us through how this discussion draft helps bring objectivity

00:33and clarity to those definitions and how these changes will improve the speed and certainty of

00:38incidental take authorizations in places like Alaska? Thank you, Representative. And I'll also

00:44note that I have spent lots of time in your state, was just there last month and will be back in

00:51September. And I have been to the end of the road at Dead Horse before. And so I'm familiar with a lot

00:58of that coastline, at least in my mind, and love the vastness of that. So again, MMPA and what we're

01:09trying to do here from a very high level, for me, it is making sure that we're conserving marine mammals,

01:17as well as being able to put us in a place where, I mean, absolutely, that's the goal of the service,

01:22is making sure those marine mammals are protected, and being able to do so in a way that we're not

01:29stymieing further development or communities or whatever it may be, working with our partners to find

01:35win-win situations. Follow-up question on that. Alaska's unique geography means that federal permitting

01:44delays don't just slow down projects, they stall lifelines for remote communities that rely on

01:50barges and ferries and seasonal construction windows. Too often, bureaucratic limbo under the

01:56MMPA has held these activities hostage. How do the firm decision timelines in this discussion draft,

02:04especially the deemed approvals, provide needed accountability for federal agencies? And what

02:09additional tools might the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service need to ensure timely processing?

02:15Yeah, thank you for that question. As you mentioned, some of the

02:20bill discussion draft, talking about timelines of how that would work, the service wants to be a part of

02:27the solution there. We need to also make sure that we're doing our best to meeting our deadlines and

02:33timelines and having involvement, and we need to be thinking outside the box of how we're able to do that.

02:39Again, we don't want to be the reason why we can't be protecting marine mammals and moving forward

02:45with projects at the same time. I think that there's ways that that can be addressed and done,

02:50and we'll look forward to working with you and the subcommittee on finding best solutions moving

02:58forward there. Thank you. One final question. The MMPA was passed in 1972, but the practical realities of

03:06operating in coastal Alaska today where marine mammal presence and human activity overlap

03:11require a regulatory framework that reflects modern science and data. We've heard concerns that overly

03:17precautionary principles have at times substituted for hard evidence. Does this legislation's requirement to

03:23use objective, best available scientific data without applying overly precautionary assumptions better

03:30align the MMPA with the realities on the ground, and how might that improve permitting outcomes

03:36in coastal Alaska? Yes, this is a great question and one that I've thought a lot about this and its

03:42applicability. If we were in Utah today and having this hearing, we'd be having the same discussion about

03:48mule deer populations, if you will, and that's constant in legislative hearings in Utah and modeling that

03:55potentially takes place by the state agency on how we get to specific numbers and collect our data,

04:02and it's always a conversation of how we do that. And again, I draw a parallel in thinking this is

04:10very similar in that the service is asked to perform a role there, and we need to make sure that our

04:15science is the best that we can come up with. And when you start talking models and modeling and the

04:20vastness of some of these marine mammals, it becomes very challenging and something that we need to be

04:26responsive to. Thank you. And I'd just like to say, you know, it should be the objective of everyone

04:33in Congress and everyone at the agency to seek hard data, to seek hard science, to make that science

04:40transparent so that we can make the best possible decisions with the information that we that we can

04:46gather and analyze. And I'm encouraged to see that we have bipartisan support. We heard from

04:53the representative from Maine earlier, talking about some of the challenges that they have in his

04:58district with the MMPA and opportunities for us to work in a bipartisan fashion to improve the MMPA

05:05and make it more effective for the populations it's attempting to protect, as well as responsive to the

05:13economic interests of the people of our nation. With that, I yield back. Thank you.

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