Feds are using this dated, incomplete and conflicting science to justify moving forward with the Endagered Species listing

Dunes Sagebrush Lizards- Another Spotted Owl Fiasco?

- Jack Dini
Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Texas is the nation’s leading oil and gas producing state. It provides 32 percent of the domestic onshore oil production and 35 percent of the domestic onshore-marketed gas production in the United States. Yet, as the importance of developing our own energy resources has become more acute than ever, oil and gas production in West Texas threatens to be shut down by the dunes sagebrush lizard. Between the environmentalists who are itching to put this little lizard on the endangered list and Obama’s Administration who have a disdain for domestic oil production, the little lizard could become another spotted owl. (1)

Gary Jason reports, “This five-inch-long lizard, supposedly dying out, has a habitat that stretches across southeastern New Mexico and west central Texas, smack-dab in the middle of the longest-exploited and most productive oil field in America, the Permian Basin field. The US Fish and Wildlife Service is trying to get this lowly lizard listed as an endangered species, claiming that oil and gas development is ruining the lizard’s habitat. Of course, if the feds declare this banal reptile ‘endangered’ all drilling companies in the affected area will immediately come under the iron fist of the Fish and Wildlife Service, which will demand that they work without ‘harming’ the habitat of the mundane creatures.â€