By Alex Ortiz, the Lone Star Chapter's Water Resources Specialist
The Texas Sierra Club has been keeping tabs on what's going on with the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard for nearly two decades, during all of which the United States Fish and Wildlife Service couldn't decide how to protect the species. The Dunes Sagebrush Lizard has been the subject of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service's rulemaking for at least a decade. The Service has grappled with whether or not to list the species as endangered, and at one point designated it with listing "warranted but precluded" status. That status means that it's precluded from listing because there are "higher priority" species for the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to deal with first. The Sagebrush Lizard became a candidate species for listing in 2001, with a relatively high priority candidacy. For the next decade, the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard was a high priority candidate species, but apparently not high enough to be actually listed as endangered. The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned FWS to list the species in 2002, and in 2004 the Service finally gave a complete response (after a lawsuit from the Center for Biological Diversity) that resulted in a warranted but precluded status for the Lizard.
The Dunes Sagebrush Lizard remained as a candidate until 2012, when the Fish and Wildlife Service withdrew the listing candidacy for the Lizard altogether. The Service was convinced that voluntary conservation agreements would be enough to protect the species, especially since these agreements avoided key habitat areas. The Sierra Club was not so convinced, because voluntary agreements are rarely, if ever, enforceable. The record of using these agreements is pretty lackluster in the United States, as they rarely allow for transparency or accountability. Now the Fish and Wildlife Service wants to use more voluntary agreements rather than just list the species, despite the fact that there is an outstanding petition right now to list the Lizard. Listing the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard would be infinitely more protective of the species as a whole, and the Service refused to acknowledge that in their proposed agreement right now. The new proposed agreement between the Service and Canyon Environmental, LLC would open up habitat of the Lizard to destruction that listing the species could prevent. Finally, the agreement would let oil and gas development occur in "high suitability" area under certain circumstances. These are the areas that would likely be designated as "critical habitat" if the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard was listed as an endangered species, and that destroying that habitat would be against the law.
The only way to protect this species is for the Fish and Wildlife Service to reject the proposed agreement and list the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard as an endangered species. The struggle for this species has spanned two decades, it's well past time that the Lizard be protected to the fullest extent of the law.