From Legal Insurrection
Posted by Leslie Eastman
“The Wildlife Service failed to rely on the best scientific and commercial data available when making its designation as required by law and therefore made inaccurate and arbitrary assumptions about the current and future status of the species.”
If Legal Insurrection were ever to have a mascot, it might have to be the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard.
Thanks to long-time reader Danelle, we have been following the creature’s endangered species status since 2011, when the Obama administration was poised to place it under protected status. It appeared to be part of a larger Obama administration effort to choke the nation’s oil production capabilities one permit at a time, as the lizard likes to make its home in lands rich in fossil fuels.
For over a year, that threat was hanging over the heads of the Texas petroleum industry before (in a rare display of sanity and reason) the US Fish and Wildlife Service denied the request.
This July, the Biden administration resurrected the request for such a listing and targeted the important oil-producing region of the Permian Basin with this action.
Now, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has just announced that his office is suing the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Biden administration officials for the declaration.
In his lawsuit, Paxton cited the successful voluntary efforts that have gone into successfully protecting this species in the region.
…Paxton said the defendants unlawfully classified the lizard as endangered in violation of the Endangered Species Act.
“The Wildlife Service failed to rely on the best scientific and commercial data available when making its designation as required by law and therefore made inaccurate and arbitrary assumptions about the current and future status of the species,” Paxton said in a statement.
“Further, the regulation classifying the dunes sagebrush lizard as endangered did not take into consideration the ongoing voluntary conservation efforts already in place at a local and state level. Because of this, the federal government’s action would unduly undermine vital economic development in the Permian Basin, subjecting Texas industries and private landowners to regulatory uncertainty and ambiguity about what they can do with their own land,” Paxton said.
Paxton had notified the Biden Administration in late July the listing violated the Endangered Species Act and he would sue if it was not reversed. The lawsuit asks the court to find the agencies acted arbitrarily and capriciously in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and the ESA.
Paxton also accused the Fish and Wildlife Service of intentionally being vague about the areas to be protected in this economically critical region.
The dunes sagebrush lizard, measuring just 2.5 inches long, inhabits roughly 4 percent of the 86,000-square-mile Permian Basin, which stretches across Texas and New Mexico, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. In Texas, the species has been identified in Andrews, Crane, Gaines, Ward, and Winkler counties.
The endangered listing mandates that oil and gas companies avoid areas where the dunes sagebrush lizard resides, but the Fish and Wildlife Service has not yet identified those specific regions as it continues to gather data. Depending on the severity of the violation, companies that violate this rule could face fines of up to $50,000 and potential prison time.
Paxton’s office criticized the Fish and Wildlife Service for not identifying the areas where the lizard resides, leaving operators and landowners in limbo about how they can use their land.
Any real science the bureaucrats in the Biden administration might use is purely coincidental.
Frankly, I hypothesize that the dunes sagebrush lizard is about as in danger of going extinct as a species as our planet is from “global warming” due to man-made carbon dioxide from fossil fuel production.
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