During a House Natural Resources Committee markup meeting before the Congressional recess, Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR) spoke about property management and ownership rights.
00:00I recognize myself and I rise in support of H.R. 839 offered by my colleague from Texas, Mr. Arrington.
00:08This is a refuge in his area and this legislation would prevent a vast expansion of the federal estate in West Texas
00:16by prohibiting the implementation of the final land protection plan for the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge.
00:23Now, I appreciate this discussion about private land rights and the ability to do what you want to with your land, to buy land, to sell land.
00:34But when you have private property rights and a free market, you not only have a willing seller, you also have a willing buyer.
00:43And in this case, the buyer or the group taking possession of the land is the federal government, which is who we represent here in Congress.
00:54And this committee takes those issues very seriously, especially when we look across the Fish and Wildlife Refuge and see that there's already a $2 billion backlog in maintenance.
01:05We can't take care of the land that we have, and I don't think the federal government should be forced to take land just because somebody wants to dispose of that land.
01:17And it's our responsibility to protect private property rights, but this is not exactly what I would call a private property rights issue when we're preventing the federal estate from growing.
01:32And especially when we've got the representative from this district saying that this refuge doesn't need to grow to 700,000 acres and, you know, take on all this additional cost and management responsibility when the Fish and Wildlife Service is failing to manage the land that they already have.
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