It wasn’t too hard for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to decide the fate of 92 freshwater snails, or 17 dragonflies, or indeed more than 500 species over the past year. But when it comes to the dunes sagebrush lizard, trouble looms.
The small, spiny reptile seeks refuge from the hot sun and potential predators in the shinnery oak dunes of southeastern New Mexico and western Texas. Ranchers have been clearing the oak shrubs, and oil and gas companies are drilling in the dunes. If the lizard is designated as an endangered species, some of those activities could be in jeopardy.
The lizard’s future is among the first in a series of wrenching tests threatening what has been a year-long cease-fire in the war over endangered-species listings.
Since two environmental groups reached landmark settlement agreements last year with the Fish and Wildlife Service, the government has resolved dozens of long-standing cases. State and industry officials who spent years largely resisting conservation efforts are now scrambling to protect imperiled species in the hopes of keeping them off the federal endangered-species list.
But now the Obama administration must decide whether to provide federal protection to a handful of animals that share their habitat with oil and gas rigs, cattle and wind turbines. And groups on both sides of the debate are skeptical of whether federal officials can make fair decisions — several of which will have ramifications for swing states in the West — in a presidential election year.
“Clearly, the notion that there’s a truce is very fragile,” said Defenders of Wildlife president Jamie Rappaport Clark, who headed the Fish and Wildlife Service under President Bill Clinton.
“It’s the calm before the storm,” said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
The storm may start with the dunes sagebrush lizard, first listed as a candidate for federal protection in 1982.
Rep. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, who has threatened to block Fish and Wildlife from listing the dunes sagebrush lizard, said the agency needs to prove it can do a better job of taking economic considerations into account in listing decisions.
Western oil and gas drillers are not the only ones scrambling to protect vulnerable species as a way of keeping them from being added to the endangered list. Fish and Wildlife must decide by Sept. 30 whether to propose listing the lesser prairie chicken, a grayish-brown grouse that lives in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. In 2015, it must decide whether to list the greater sage grouse, whose historic habitat traverses 11 states.
