mr. chairman , i yield myself such time as i may consume . 
we bring up today the endangered species reform act with the purpose of trying to deal with what some of the real issues are , what some of the real problems are that we have had and have developed over the last 30 years . 
if one goes back and reads the original endangered species act , it becomes difficult to be critical of specific language that is it in because the purpose of the endangered species act was to , first of all , prevent species from becoming extinct but , more importantly , to recover those species . 
and as we look at what has happened over the intervening 30 years , we begin to realize just what problems are with the act and the way it is being implemented today . 
i came into this debate originally because i did not like the way that private property owners were treated under the implementation of the law . 
that became a big issue in my district and throughout much of the west . 
private property owners felt threatened that they would lose their private property and that they could lose control and the ability to use their private property under the implementation of the law . 
that became a big problem , and it is something that we began to work on , to try to have some kind of property rights protections in the law . 
but the more i got into the endangered species act , the more i realized the law was just not working in terms of recovering species . 
about 1 , 300 species have been listed under the endangered species act . 
of those 1 , 300 , 10 have been removed because they were recovered . 
more species have been removed from the list because they became extinct than were recovered . 
that less than 1 percent is a complete failure , so we began to really look at the law and see are species really doing better under the endangered species act , and we came to the conclusion that they were not . 
about three-quarters of the species are either declining in population or the fish and wildlife service has no idea . 
that is not a success . 
when people talk about the act and its importance , they are right , it is important . 
it is something we all share in terms of preserving wildlife and preserving species . 
but when the law is not working , we have to respond to that and step in and reauthorize the bill , put the focus on recovery and protect private property owners . 
as we have gone through this last several months , i have had the opportunity to work with the ranking member , the gentleman from west virginia ( mr. rahall ) xz4003310 , and his staff ; and i thank them for all of the work that they put into this bill to get us to this point . 
we worked extremely hard to try and find a compromise bill . 
in the end , there were a few issues that we just disagreed on , there were issues we could not come to a conclusion on , but the vast majority of what is in the underlying bill was an agreement that we were able to work out and that i stand by . 
i believe it is good work , that it is something that is extremely important . 
but i will say that , in the end , private property rights , the protection of those property owners , has to be in the final bill , because the only way this is going to work is if we bring in property owners to be part of the solution and be part of recovering those species . 
mr. chairman , i reserve the balance of my time . 
