Recovering America’s Wildlife Act died in Congress last year. Could it still become law?

Just a few months ago, the US was ready to pass one of the most significant environmental laws in history: the Restoring America’s Wildlife Act. The bill, known as RAWA, would fund species conservation across the country and is considered the largest environmental legislation since the Endangered Species Act of 1973.

In June, RAWA passed the US House by a large margin. And a few months earlier, it cleared the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee with bipartisan support. It has the votes of the Senate. Then, in December, a few weeks before the end of the congressional term, it seemed the bill’s time was finally over: Lawmakers included RAWA in a massive government spending bill.

But before the bill was passed, RAWA was cut, mainly because Congress disagreed on how to pay for it. Then the congress period is over. RAWA is dead; lawmakers must restart the process. This comes just days after more than 190 countries agreed to protect wildlife at the UN biodiversity summit in Montreal.

“The world just decided that nature needs more protection,” said Tom Cors, land director for US government relations at the Nature Conservancy. And here is the US, sinking a bill that would protect species even before they were considered endangered. “It’s bittersweet, knowing you’re on the cusp of generational progress for conservation and then realizing you have to start from scratch,” he said.

When RAWA fails in 2022, it is not dead for good.

The core of the bill still has bipartisan support. In fact, some environmental advocates say it could pass as soon as this year, realistically — on the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act. Here’s what it means and what can happen.

Addressing the big problems in American conservation

One-third or more of the species in the US are threatened with extinction, according to the Nature Conservancy. Think about it: One in three species could disappear. This includes things like owls, salamanders, fish, and plants, each of which contributes some function to the ecosystems we depend on.

Fortunately, there is conservation, and in the US, much of it is done by state wildlife agencies. The Department of Fish and Game has several programs to monitor and manage species that include reintroducing locally extinct animals and setting regulations for hunting and fishing.

Image by Dan Rieck/Getty

His work, however, faced some big problems.

The first is that the country does not have enough money. About 80 percent of the funding for state-led conservation comes from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses, in addition to federal excise taxes on related equipment, such as guns and ammunition. These activities are not as popular as they used to be. “This results in less conservation work being done,” Andrew Rypel, a freshwater ecologist at the University of California Davis, told Vox in August.

Another challenge is that states spend all the money they collect on managing animals that people like to hunt or fish, such as elk and trout. “At the state level, there is almost zero focus on non-game fish and wildlife,” Daniel Rohlf, a law professor at Lewis & Clark Law School, said in August. That leaves many species – including, say, types of freshwater mussels – that play a very important role in our ecosystem.

RAWA can be a fix. The bill would provide state wildlife agencies with a total of $1.3 billion annually through 2026, based on state size, human population, and the number of federally threatened species. RAWA also includes nearly $100 million for the nation’s Native American tribes, who own or help manage nearly 140 million acres of land in the US (equal to about 7 percent of the continental US).

One of the features of RAWA that makes it very useful, according to environmentalists, it requires the state to protect animals that are imperiled, whether they are targeted by hunters and fishermen. “That’s funding that doesn’t exist right now,” Rohlf said.

RAWA also aims to restore wildlife populations before they are at risk of extinction, to avoid listing endangered animals under the Endangered Species Act, which carries all the burdens and costs of regulation. (You can learn more about RAWA in this explanation.)

RAWA was not asked

After RAWA passed the House last summer, lawmakers turned to the bill’s highest hurdle: “pay-for,” aka how to cover the cost of the legislation, without having to raise the deficit.

Negotiations took place throughout the fall, and legislators proposed several different proposals. In the final week of the congressional term, it looks like the administration will pay for RAWA by closing a tax loophole related to cryptocurrency, as E&E News’ Emma Dumain reports.

In the end, lawmakers couldn’t agree on the details. That is why RAWA was cut from the omnibus bill.

But never objected to the substance of the bill, according to Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), who supported RAWA. Has dozens of Republican co-sponsors. “It wasn’t for ideological or even political reasons” that it was cut, he told Vox. “We don’t have a mobilized opposition.”

That’s why environmental advocates are bringing hope into the new congressional term. “The Senate bill is still bipartisan,” said Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, a nonprofit that advocated for the legislation. That’s huge, because few bills are bipartisan and even fewer are “fully baked,” he said — meaning the legislation is agreed upon.

So what is happening now? Everything that happened last year, basically. The bill must be run through the House and Senate again, get co-sponsors in both chambers, and pass through committee.

Oh, and then there’s the issue of paying, which hasn’t been resolved yet. So far, it’s unclear what tools the government will use, O’Mara said, and other congressional priorities could get in the way of funding discussions. (New House rules adopted by the Republican-led chamber also affect what the government can use to pay for legislation.)

Still, O’Mara and Sen. Schatz is confident that Congress can get it done, and pass RAWA as soon as this year. “Structurally, we’re in a good position to get this done in the coming Congress,” Schatz said.

That’s a good thing, too, because “we’re in the midst of a crisis,” O’Mara said, referring to the unprecedented rate of biodiversity loss around the world. “Failure is just not an option. We have to keep going until we finish.”