Bruce Westerman Introduces Endangered Species Act Amendments Act of 2025
Washington, D.C. – Safari Club International (SCI) commends House Natural Resources Committee Chair Bruce Westerman (R-AR-04) for introducing the Endangered Species Act (ESA) Amendments Act of 2025. This long-overdue legislation is a major step in bringing the ESA into the 21st century, ensuring it works to recover species and promote collaboration with landowners, conservationists, and the sporting community, instead of allowing for endless litigation cycles and bureaucratic overreach.
For decades, environmental and animal rights groups more interested in control than conservation have hijacked the ESA. The ESA Amendments Act of 2025 restores the law’s original intent—helping species recover, not locking them in perpetual regulatory limbo. This bill injects much-needed common sense into federal wildlife policy by streamlining the delisting process for recovered species, rewarding effective international conservation efforts, and aligning U.S. import-export regulations with proven science-based practices.
ESA Reform of this kind is part of SCI’s 2025 Policy Priorities, which it relayed to the Trump administration earlier this year. SCI is committed to advocating for policies that protect hunting and conservation as essential tools for species recovery. SCI urges the House of Representatives and Senate to swiftly pass the ESA Amendments Act of 2025 to ensure that science, not an uninformed political agenda, guides future conservation efforts.
“Congressman Westerman’s legislation puts collaboration science and results ahead of politics and obstruction,” said SCI CEO W. Laird Hamberlin. “Groups like the Center for Biological Diversity have spent years using the ESA as a weapon to block conservation success. They’re stuck in the past and unwilling to acknowledge when recovery efforts work. This bill corrects that and puts data a willingness to work with those on the ground, living with listed species, including in foreign countries at the forefront of conservation policy.”
“This legislation is a win for hunters, conservationists, and wildlife species alike,” said SCI President John McLaurin. “America’s sportsmen have funded the most successful conservation programs in the world, and it’s time the ESA recognized those achievements instead of pointlessly erecting meaningless roadblocks to sustainable-use hunting and wildlife conservation. Chairman Westerman’s bill brings the law back in line with real-world conservation success.”
Background:
For over 50 years, SCI has led the fight to defend hunting rights and promote wildlife conservation worldwide. SCI is the only hunting rights organization with a national and international advocacy team based in Washington, D.C., and an all-species focus. With more than 150 chapters and affiliate networks representing millions of hunters, SCI is the leading force for responsible, science-driven wildlife management.