Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) gets his chance this week to ask an Interior Department official why he recommended removing Everglades National Park from the United Nations' list of endangered sites over the objection of the National Park Service.

Nelson will convene the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee he chairs this Wednesday to quiz Todd Willens about the unexpected decision to remove the Everglades from the U.N. list in June.

Willens, Interior's deputy assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks and a former aide to then-House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), has admitted the Park Service wanted Everglades to remain on the list.

"I changed the last sentence of our report and said we wanted to be taken off," Willens told the St. Petersburg Times last month (E&ENews PM, Aug. 3).

Nelson has subsequently called for Willens' ouster.

"The bottom line is the U.N. should have been presented with the position of our own agency experts," Nelson said in a recent letter to Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. "This action is absolutely unacceptable and, I believe, warrants Willens' removal."

But Kempthorne has issued a statement welcoming the decision to remove Everglades from the list as a sign Interior is making progress toward restoring the region. And Willens and Kameran Onley, assistant deputy Interior secretary, argued in a recent South Florida Sun-Sentinel op-ed that the U.N. decision was actually a reflection of the efforts of the federal and state governments to restore the Everglades ecosystem.

"Some have misinterpreted the criteria used by UNESCO's World Heritage Committee and the administration's support for removing the park from the list," Willens and Onley wrote.

The park was first placed on the U.N. list of endangered sites in 1993 after Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida.

"The designation calls attention to specific and imminent threats facing a site and seeks to generate action by the responsible government and world community," Willens and Onley said. "When the committee is persuaded that actions to address the threats are being taken, it customarily removes the site from the endangered list."

Schedule: The hearing is scheduled for 3 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 19, in 419 Dirksen.

Witnesses: Gerald Anderson, deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, State Department; Anu Mittal, director, Natural Resources and Environmental Team, U.S. Government Accountability Office; and Todd Willens, deputy assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, Interior Department.