The lizard’s status has for the last several years been a contentious issue for the state of Texas and the Texas oil industry.
Claiming that the Biden Administration is “weaponizing” environmental law, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit September 23, alleging that the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Biden Administration officials unlawfully classified the dunes sagebrush lizard as an endangered species. the attorney general further said that the administration’s actions were in violation of the Endangered Species Act.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s unlawful misuse of environmental law is a backdoor attempt to undermine Texas’s oil and gas industries which help keep the lights on for America,” Attorney General Paxton said in a statement posted on the website of the Texas Attorney General. “I warned that we would sue over this illegal move, and now we will see them in court.”
The dunes sagebrush lizard (Sceloporus arenicolus), which is native to about 4 percent of the lands in the 86,000 square miles of the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, has been the subject of a tug of war between the USFWS, environmentalists and the oil and gas industry for several decades.
Dunes Sagebrush Lizard Listed Under Endangered Species Act
Texas Comptroller Terminates Oil Industry Foundation set up to Protect Dunes Sagebrush Lizard
The lizard’s status has for the last several years been a contentious issue for the state of Texas and the Texas oil industry. The agency that was set up in 2013 to monitor the voluntary protection efforts for the dunes sagebrush lizard was comprised of oil industry lobbyists, according to a report in the Texas Tribune. The Texas Habitat Conservation Foundation was formed, supposedly in an effort to ensure that the agreements laid out to protect the lizard were enforced. That agency was disbanded.
United States Rep. August Pfluger, R-San Angelo filed a bill last year designed to essentially weaken the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s ability to protect and list the dunes sagebrush lizard as an endangered species, in an effort to preserve the drilling of oil in the region in which the lizard is known to inhabit.
The bill, “Limiting Incredulous Zealots Against Restricting Drilling” Act — or LIZARD Act, would have halt federal government oversight of species and to let individual and industry efforts to protect the dunes sagebrush lizard and other species that are endangered or could potentially be listed as endangered. The LIZARD Act went nowhere.
The USFWS has found that, based on the best available scientific and commercial information, that listing of the lizard in May of this year, was warranted.
The lizard is only found in the shinnery oak sand dune ecosystems of West Texas. and southeastern New Mexico. This ecosystem is also home to large oil and gas development and sand mining.
The proposed and final rules on this species as well as comments received on the propose rule are available at www.regulations.gov. When entering this website, search docket number FWS-R2-ES-2022-0162.
Dunes Sagebrush Lizard Information
The dunes sagebrush lizard is found in southeastern New Mexico and West Texas. The dunes sagebrush lizard is native to small areas of shinnery oak dunes in these states, according to the USFWS. USFWS has not yet determined which area should be designated as critical habitat for the lizard.
