The enviro-facists are trying to do the same thing down here in southeast NM and West Texas with listing the lesser prairie chicken as endangered. This will not only affect ranchers but also the oil and gas industry.
Congressman Steve Pearce is taking the lead in fighting this with the DOI’s F&WS. He succeeded in preventing the endangered species listing of the desert sagebrush lizard by organizing conservation areas with the oil companies who ponied up big bucks in support of these. The F&WS backed off (for now) but the same Tucson enviro-Nazis who sued to prevent logging/timber thinning in spotted owl areas (i.e. everywhere - and we know how that worked out - terrible large forest fires destroying huge areas of AZ/NM the past couple of years) are suing to force the lizard listing.
A good summary of how we stopped the lizard listing and what needs to be done to stop the chicken listing:
http://pearce.house.gov/editorial/new-mexico-jobs-are-endangeredagain
The enviro-Nazis will try any fish, bird, worm ... trick to stop farming, ranching, fishing, logging, mining ...
Thanks for the article.