States need to have a larger role in implementing the Endangered Species Act, three heads of state wildlife agencies told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee at a hearing.“State fish and wildlife directors generally believe the ESA is not performing as it should and is not sufficiently leveraging state agency expertise and cooperation,” Nick Wiley, executive director of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and president of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, told the EPW committee. “Combined, our nation’s 50 state fish and wildlife agencies are a formidable wildlife conservation machine,” Barrasso said, citing statistics showing that the state agencies employ 11,000 wildlife biologists, a figure that Voyles said was nearly equal to the entire workforce of the Fish and Wildlife Service.But ranking minority member Tom Carper, D-Del., said his understanding is that states spend about one quarter of what FWS invests to protect listed and candidate species. “If we include all federal agency spending, the collective state investment is about 4 percent,” he said. “Granted, this likely means we need to invest more in our states. But it also means that states have some soul-searching to do.”