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Posted on 04/21/2011 7:28:46 AM PDT by CedarDave
Congressman Steve Pearce, R-N.M., will be attending a rally opposing the listing of the Sand Dune Lizard as an endangered species with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in Artesia today [Wednesday].
If listed, regulations may be invoked to conserve the lizard’s habitat; regulations posing potentially devastating effects on oil and gas industry operations within or near the lizard’s habitat.
The Sand Dune Lizard is listed as Endangered by the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, and has been a candidate species for listing under the Endangered Species Act by the SUFWS since 2001. Threats to the lizard include habitat removal, fragmentation and degradation as a result of oil and gas development and shinnery oak removal.
(Excerpt) Read more at artesianews.com ...
Friends - with his permission, I am forwarding this letter to you from Ben Shepperd, who is President of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association. The topic of endangered species, and those proposed to be placed on the endangered species list, may, in the face of all the national news regarding budgets and economies, wars, disastrous weather, etc., to be rather trivial. Only because it has been made to appear trivial does it continue to seem so, but the proposed additions to the list could not have more dire results. If the sand dune lizard is placed on the list, and if it is approved and protected to the extent the Fish & Wildlife folks want, the effects will be catastrophic. Who will be affected? Well, of course, the oil and gas industry, but also: ranchers, farmers, wind farms, future solar generator sites, and, ultimately, you and I.
The area for the lizard spans New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Kansas. If it is "protected" to the extent the government desires, for the next two to five years there can be NO drilling, NO erecting wind farms, NO ranching, NO farming, or any other activity that may harm, kill or, and I'm not kidding here, "harass" the lizard. This means, again I'm not kidding, that if the lizard is distracted, even slightly, by sound, artificial light, smells, fumes, or footsteps through their territory, the perpetrator can be charged for "harassment" and fined a godawful amount of money. If you don't believe me, check out the recent ruling against an oil company for harassing one (ONE!!) snail. They had to pay close to a half millions dollars in damages and then not drill in the area. (How they figured out the snail had been harassed, I don't know, anymore than I know how they determined which of the tiny things felt the need for therapy, but there you are. I'm sorry. It's hard not to make stupid jokes about it because the whole thing sounds so utterly ridiculous. Sadly, it is very serious business, though.)
It is out of control. It is beyond absurd. What has been working is cooperation between the BLM (Bureau of Land Management, who, surprisingly is onboard with the objections to this nonsense) and landowners in New Mexico. They have worked out an amicable agreement that allows both the protection of the "endangered species" on their property and still allows them the ability to make full use of their lands. The feds aren't happy with this, though, and want to create whole swaths of land where no activity can happen at all. In a happier time, I naively believed that because you owned the property, you had rights. Well, those rights are slipping through our fingers like sand through a sieve. This simply must stop before it becomes finalized because there will be little or no recourse at that time.
Please, please, please send this to your friends, family and anyone else you might think would support a reasonable way to deal with this problem. No one wants to wipe out a species, but no one wants the government to wipe out multiple industries and businesses either. From my point of view, if my clients are no longer able to make a living, neither will I. This is very personal - and I never in my life thought I'd give a damn about a lizard or a prairie chicken.
Please come to the rally nearest to you, both if you can, and attend the public hearings. It is vital that D.C. hears our views. It is vital that we speak. If not now, when? If not us, who?
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Why do environazi’s expect to halt the natural process?
Of course, the real endangered species here is the American worker.
Who will stop this madness? Palin certainly has the common sense to do so, and probably Trump also. There is no one else that I can think of.
If the fed won’t relax on these brittle regs., then the push should begin to delete the regs. all together.
The regs themselves are blocking the “commerce clause” dems are always touting.
Finally the O&G industry has come back to life here in SE NM. Roads crowded with oil and gas semi’s carrying oil, water, supplies, tanks etc. New drilling rigs just about everyplace you look or workover rigs on existing wells. Motels and rentals full, other business humming along, “Now Hiring” signs out on just about every oil field service industry business, especially for truck drivers and mechanics.
Now the enviro-Nazi’s in the federal government want to shut it down.
For millions of years different species have died out as new ones emerged.
Why do environazi’s expect to halt the natural process?
They beleive in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution but reject his “Survival of the fittest”. How convenient.
One good thing is that the Feds won’t have the support of the NM governor this time. The voters kicked out the Richardson admin and his enviro buddies last election. The adults are in charge.
(New tag line — stolen from Jonah Goldberg as heard on Laura Ingraham’s show Tuesday)
Does Susana know about this?
Love that tagline...that could work for any and all of Obama’s policies...he puts out a HUGH and SERIES amount of unicorn poop!
PVT is running hundreds of ads on their cable network, urging people to stop by and sign a pertition against it.
There a dozen of the lizards running around my drill site.
Yeah, o.k., but are they the right type of lizard?? Maybe it's the green colored (eco-friendly you know) ones they are worried about. /s
However, more than once I have stopped and rescued a tortoise that was about to get crushed while crossing the road. Lizards get out of your way, road-kill tortoise will make a small but tasty meal for the crows and buzzards.
The way the BLM mandates site restoration should provide plenty of habitat for the lizard.
I presume she does. She's plugged in to the industry. Steve Pearce is the only one of the Congressional delegation bringing this to the attention of the population. The others, all four of them, are in the pocket of the enviro-nutters.
>They beleive in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution but reject his “Survival of the fittest”. How convenient.
It is exactly how the Judiciary uses “precedence” as well; look up the federal case “US v. Rock Ridge Armory” and consider what it would be like if *that* precedent were to be used in other federal firearm cases.
Well, New Mexico elected a Republican governor. Obama can’t have that. He now has his boot on NM.
Not only in New Mexico. They are going after Texas as well. It’s time to start shooting back.
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