Free Republic

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell announced Monday that the state will sue the Obama administration to allow construction of a 10-mile road to give residents of a remote fishing village access to emergency medical flights at an all-weather airport. Residents of King Cove, Alaska, were outraged in December when Interior Secretary Sally Jewell nixed a plan for a land swap that would have allowed the building of an unpaved road between the small town and the airport at Cold Bay. ... Since Ms. Jewell rejected the land swap, which would have given the refuge 43,093 acres of state land and 13,300...

It might, if the US Fish and Wildlife Service puts the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard on the endangered-species list. USFWS has an open period for public comment at the moment on the proposal, which if adopted could force oil companies in West Texas and New Mexico to close up shop. The industry argues that USFWS is relying on bad data and faulty methodology: A three-inch lizard that thrives in desert conditions could shut down oil and gas operations in portions of Southeast New Mexico and in West Texas, including the state’s top two oil producing counties.Called the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard, it...

You can't make this up.  First, a Spotted Owl destroyed the timber industry of the Pacific Northwest, then a minnow turned the most productive agricultural land in the world into a dustbowl, and now, as energy prices spike and the economy sputters, they're going after Texas with a scurrilous reptile.    Specifically, the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard.  That's the latest more-important-than-people critter being used to lock-up resources in the name of planet Earth.  The drilling moratorium didn't cause enough pain, so onto the Endangered Species Act - known at the Sierra Club as "Ol' Reliable" - to make certain Texas has...