[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Page 9081]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              WILDLIFE INNOVATION AND LONGEVITY DRIVER ACT

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I wanted to express my support for the 
Wildlife Innovation and Longevity Driver Act, also known as the WILD 
Act. I commend my Senate colleagues for passing this legislation last 
week.
  I firmly believe that we have a moral duty to be good stewards of our 
planet, and that includes working together to conserve species and 
their habitat in the United States and around the world. We face many 
pressing wildlife management challenges; yet we have heard in the 
Environment and Public Works Committee that State and Federal agencies 
do not have adequate resources to face these troubling challenges. That 
is what makes innovation and collaboration so important, and the WILD 
Act inspires both.
  The WILD Act incentivizes innovators by establishing cash-prize 
competitions for new technologies that prevent poaching, promote 
conservation, manage invasive species, protect endangered species, and 
use nonlethal methods to control wildlife. It directs Federal agencies 
to manage invasive species on public lands and reauthorizes effective 
government conservation programs, including those that protect some of 
our most loved species--elephants, great apes, tigers, rhinos, and 
marine turtles.
  The WILD Act also reauthorizes the Department of Interior's 
Partnership for Fish and Wildlife Program, which leverages Federal 
funding by working with hard-working private landowners to restore and 
improve fish and wildlife habitats on their land.
  Wildlife conservation is not a partisan issue, which is why I was so 
pleased to join with Chairman Barrasso and our colleagues on both sides 
of the aisle in support of this legislation.
  The WILD Act has also been endorsed by a diverse group of 
stakeholders, including the World Wildlife Fund, National Wildlife 
Federation, Ducks Unlimited, and the Family Farm Alliance. I want to 
thank these organizations for their commitment to this issue and their 
interest in helping our challenged fisheries and threatened ecosystems, 
as well as internationally treasured rhinos and elephants.
  I urge the House to pass the WILD Act and the President to sign it 
into law.
  Thank you.

                          ____________________