Posted on 05/10/2012 5:23:12 AM PDT by thackney
U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Wednesday that the dunes sagebrush lizard might not be listed as endangered if enough energy companies and ranchers voluntarily agree to preserve the sand-dwelling reptile’s habitat.
Salazar endorsed the conservation pacts as a way to protect the lizard while avoiding the more rigid federal endangered-species listing, which could put the brakes on oil and gas drilling in parts of West Texas and New Mexico.
“We are making great progress with volunteer agreements,” he said after touring a ConocoPhillips site near Midland, in the imperiled lizard’s range. “We might be able to avoid a listing.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service, which Salazar oversees, must decide by mid-June whether to list the three-inch reptile, also known as the sand dune lizard, as an endangered species, a designation intended to save it from extinction.
The federal agency was due to make a decision last year, but delayed it by six months under intense congressional pressure. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and other lawmakers asked for the delay after questioning the agency’s methods for surveying the lizard.
Salazar said the listing will be based on the best available science, but may not be necessary because of the growing number of conservation agreements.
Fish and Wildlife proposed listing the lizard as endangered in 2010 because of increased oil and gas activity in the Permian Basin had left the lizard without enough habitat to survive. The reptile lives only among stands of shinnery oak, a relatively rare tree that thrives in the sand dunes of southeastern New Mexico and West Texas.
The agreements require landowners to take a number of steps, from designating buffers around dunes where the lizards live to removing well pads and roads to recovering former habitat. Ranchers also promise not spray herbicides to remove shinnery oak, which are toxic to cattle.
The agreements, in turn, shield them from liability for the accidental “taking” of a lizard. In Texas, ranchers and energy companies have enrolled 211,770 acres, or about 70 percent, of habitat area in voluntary conservation pacts with the state comptroller’s office.
The proposed listing of the lizard “was based on loss and fragmentation of habitat,” said Dan Ashe, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. “The agreements we have are designed to do just that, protect the habitat.”
Still, Permian Basin Petroleum Association President Ben Shepperd, whose group represents about 900 oil and gas producers, questioned the need for conservation plans, saying research does not show the lizard is threatened or endangered.
Despite the “carrot” of no endangered-species listing for conservation agreements, Shepperd said, “I see no need to surrender part of Texas to an administration in Washington, D.C., that has shown only contempt for the oil it contains.”
Environmentalists, meanwhile, said the sand dune lizard warrants federal protection and questioned whether the conservation agreements would provide enough.
“The Fish and Wildlife Service has a policy for evaluating conservation measures for imperiled species and voluntary, unproven conservation agreements are unlikely to meet that standard,” said Mark Salvo, wildlife program director for WildEarth Guardians. “But we support any good faith effort to protect sensitive flora and fauna.”
We have enough lizards in Texas—the country needs more oil!
Salazar’s a lizard.
Blackmail, protect the lizard or don’t drill. How many oil wells have you seen in sand hills?
We have a country desperate for energy and we worry about a damned lizard.
Haven’t been there—don’t care. My point is still, we need more oil than we do lizards.
That sagebrush lizard had a huge population in all areas of Texas until the fire ant explosion. I’ve seen a number of them lately, since the TX Dept of Agriculture introduced that tiny knat that kills the fire ants.
Of course he is! Let me see—who was it that appointed him? Oh yeah—a guy by the name of obammy, or something like that.
These idiots don’t want to give up their lifestyles, they jut want the rest of us to do that.......
The country needs oil. The lizard needs to be conserved.
You CAN have both and by providing for both, take the wind out of the sails of the Eco-Nazis who want to stop all progress. It NEVER a case of EITHER/OR. We CAN have our cake and eat it too.
Asbestos underwear donned for the expectred flames!!!!
Anyone buying this new found love for oil and gas horse-hockey from nobama and any of his helpers needs to take a look at this nice bridge I have for sale in Brooklyn.
These lefties giving a wink to their green compadres, knowing if they get re-elected they will have 20 “good” reasons to shut down oil and gas for the lizard or maybe an endangered botfly.
That was Texas A&M. Gig ‘em fire ants.
If they were going to put in useless solar panels, no lizard or anything else would stand in the way.
“Salizar is an economic hit man.”
You mean “contract killer”. Turn their invective back at them.
Why don't they just kill every single one of them? Problem solved.
Good news! First I have heard of it. Now if they could only figure out some kind of birth control for wild hogs.
There are lots of choices available:
I heard about this several years ago.
There, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is pitting the tiny phorid fly, newly imported from Brazil, against the current reigning champion pest, the fire ant. The bout was recently featured in the pages of National Geographic and the San Antonio Express News.
As described in the Express News, “These phorid flies are natural predators of fire ants and can dispatch them with the grisly efficiency of a science fiction monster — implanting eggs in their little ant chests that then hatch into larvae and eat their little ant brains.” According to the articles, experts say the phorid fly will almost certainly not wipe out the fire ant, but could cut local populations up to 30% and make them more vulnerable.
As usual, this is total BS from the morons of little bammy's freak show.. The thing is all over the western united States.
Utah
Nevada
southern Idaho
northern Arizona
northwestern New Mexico
Texas
western Colorado
Southern California
Oregon
Montana
Washington
Habitat
True to its name, the sagebrush lizard prefers to live in sagebrush, but is also found in pine or fir forests, redwood forests, brushlands, and piñon-juniper woodlands. They can often be found sunning on logs or sedimentary rock outcroppings, and spend most of their time on the ground, although they will climb trees to escape predators.
Loss of habitat due to agriculture, intensive grazing, and oil developments has affected the species in the shortgrass prairie badlands of North Dakota and other western states. Aerial spraying of insecticides may have also affected insect populations, the main diet of northern sagebrush lizards. Habitat loss has also increased with new residential developments in common habitats.
Interesting.
I don't see TEXAS in there anywhere.
But despite a known issue in North Dakota their focus is only on TEXAS.
Is it those huge new housing projects out there past Odessa doing it, right?
Wait, there are no huge new housing projects out there past Odessa.
Apparently all that is OK and according to little banny's crew, just the oilfields in TEXAS ever cause problems.
Just the oilfields.
TEXAS.
But what about this?
Predators
Sagebrush lizards are important prey for a variety of vertebrate species in the western United States. Snakes, especially striped whipsnakes and night snakes, are the main predators of the lizards, but birds of prey also consume them in large quantities. Smaller carnivorous mammals and domesticated cats also prey on them.
Large quantities?
That sounds like there are, umm, LOTS of them?
But hey, can't have too many finer scale sagebrush lizards that "lives only among stands of shinnery oak" but in reality actually are found in pine or fir forests, redwood forests, brushlands, piñon-juniper woodlands, sunning on logs or sedimentary rock outcroppings, spending most of their time on the ground, climbing any tree to escape predators.
In eleven States...
.large quantities
Yep, it is the same tactic they used with the spotted owl, saying it could only live in old growth forest, which is total BS. They will live in any tree they can find. Show me an owl that can tell the age of a tree and I will show you a miracle.
I don't know much about this lizard but I know about the lizard habitat because that is also excellant quail habitat and I did a lot of quail hunting in that area.
Most of this dunes lizard habitat was lost to farming long ago.
Its mostly all private propery. Some of it ranch/grazing land. Some of it is farm land, mostly cotton. Some of it is just unused land, when oil was discovered the owner moved into town and doesn't use it for any thing, he has royalty money coming in.
Along a fence line between say cotton and ranchland the sand drifts up and brush incuding mesquite and shimmering oak starts growing and the dune and brush, the fence row, grows larger each year. Before long the fence row is 40-50 feet wide and only the top 6 inches of the fence post is sticking out, the brush is so thick you can't walk thru it. Eventually the row gets so large they'll come in and blade it out so they can plant it or graze it.
The Landowner Incentive Program and/or the Private Stewardship Grants Program should provide govt grants to the landowners or the oil companies to pay for this. Give the grant money to these private parties and let them take care of it.
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