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Floor Speech

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Mr. PADILLA. Madam President, I rise to introduce the Wildlife Movement Through Partnerships Act. This bipartisan legislation will improve collaboration across jurisdictions and support State, Tribal, and local efforts to improve wildlife habitat connectivity and migration corridors.

As our country grows, both in population and development, so do the interactions between wildlife and humans. Every day in America, animals across the country cross roads and highways, hop fences and barriers, and navigate new human-made obstacles in order to survive. All too often, this means traditional wildlife corridors for migration are being cut off by human-made barriers, and that the biodiversity around us is coming under threat.

In November 2023, I chaired a hearing in the Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Fisheries, Water, and Wildlife to hear testimony from stakeholders on the challenges and solutions to facilitating wildlife migration and movement corridors across public, Tribal, and private lands, and I am proud that the legislation I am introducing today is the bipartisan product of that hearing.

The Wildlife Movement Through Partnerships Act would provide financial and technical assistance to support the movement and migration of wildlife.

Specifically, the bill would formally establish several programs at the Department of the Interior to conserve, restore, or enhance habitat, migration routes, and connectivity; improve mapping efforts to better understand how and where wildlife move; and allow funds from the existing Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program to be used for wildlife movement. The bill would also direct the Departments of the Interior, Agriculture, and Transportation to coordinate actions and funding for programs established by the bill and to improve coordination with States, Tribes, and non-governmental partners. Finally, the bill would ensure that the legislation is only applied in a voluntary manner while protecting valid existing and private rights, military readiness, private property, public access, and the authority or jurisdiction of States and Tribes.

In 2018, the Interior Secretary signed secretarial order 3362, ``Improving Habitat Quality in Western Big-Game Winter Range and Migration Corridors,'' in 11 Western States. To implement the secretarial order, Federal Agencies have used funding from relevant existing appropriations to support habitat improvement projects and research in areas identified by States for a limited set of big game species. While implementation of the secretarial order has been successful, Congress should create formal and dedicated programs in order to maintain this important work while expanding implementation to species beyond just big game and across the entire United States.

This bill would also build on the success of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which made an unprecedented $350 million investment in the Department of Transportation to implement a first-of-its-kind pilot program to make roads safer, prevent wildlife-vehicle collisions, and improve habitat connectivity. While this funding is critical, we must think bigger than individual wildlife crossings to boost wildlife connectivity at the landscape scale across the country.

I want to thank Representative Zinke for leading this bill in the House, and I hope all of our colleagues will join us in supporting this bipartisan bill to improve habitat connectivity and maintain intact wildlife corridors for species--big and small. ______

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