When the rescission of the Southern Rockies habitat corridor easement was proposed in February, it had the open support of eleven members of Congress across two state delegations.
We contacted all eleven this week. Two responded.
Neither answer addressed the question we asked, which was whether they still support the rescission.
What changed
Nothing about the policy. The easement covers the same 1.4 million acres it covered in February, and the arguments for rescinding it, which centered on permitting timelines for transmission projects, have not been rebutted by anyone.
What changed is the coverage.
A staffer for one of the eleven, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the office's position, put it in terms that were unusually direct.
"There is no version of this hearing that goes well. Either you are against the bears or you are taking the bears seriously. Pick one and it runs on cable that night."
A congressional staffer
The Interior Department has not scheduled a markup. A committee aide said no hearing is currently planned and declined to say whether one had been planned and cancelled.
The procedural knot
The rescission cannot advance while the comment docket remains open, and the docket has been reopened eleven times since March following outages at the data centers hosting the federal e-rulemaking portal.
That means the easement stays in place by default, without anyone having to vote on it, defend it, or explain it.
Several offices appear to find this acceptable.