Rivals say protecting endangered lizard threatens oil, gas industries
The Fish and Wildlife Service has decided to list the sand dune lizard on the endangered species list, protecting its habitat from everything, including drilling. The lizard, native to southeast New Mexico and four counties in adjacent Texas, is causing a stir among oil and gas producers in the state who fear its protection could put thousands of New Mexicans out of work.
“The listing of the lizard has several bad outcomes, but jobs is the worst outcome. We stand to lose agriculture production, all of the oil and gas jobs; it might shut down the nuclear enrichment facility,” said Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, who cites New Mexico's joblessness at 9 percent.
hahahahhahahhha.
Oh, yes; Steve. That little lizard is just going to ruin the entire New Mexican and Texan economy, because of all of these Soshlists that horrible Barack Obama put in power.
This is good news, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out, but somehow I'm not really worried that oil and gas mining, agriculture, or even uranium enrichment are going to be shut down around here in the process of anyone's efforts to protect these little guys.
They live around shinnery oaks. I'd never even heard of shinnery oaks. Oil and gas mining is trashing their habitat, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
Refusing to let the sand dune lizard be another casualty of cattle grazing and Bush's energy policy, the Center petitioned for the animal to be listed under the Endangered Species Act in 2002. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service made the sand dune lizard a candidate for listing, thereby avoiding a grant of full protection.
And now, from what I'm reading in today's news, they have decided to list the species, or at least say they think it should be listed. (You never know about the press).
Wild Earth Guardians has a page on this species.
In a remarkable landscape in southeastern New Mexico, there is a unique miniature world tucked in amidst the ruddy sand dunes. Tiny oak trees only 3 feet tall, known as shinnery oaks, surround a wind-hollowed depression in the sand, a little over 300 cm deep and around 30 m long. In this tiny realm, and rarely more than six feet away from its favorite miniature tree the shinnery oak, lives a sand dune lizard.
Little sand dune lizard kingdoms such as this are scattered through around 650 square miles in New Mexico and a tiny area of southwestern Texas. The sand dune lizard has second smallest range of any lizard native to North America and has incredibly specific habitat requirements, right down to the size of the sand grains in its shinnery dune blowout (medium-sized, not too coarse or too fine). In its tiny habitat, it lives a tiny life (one to two years), eats ants, small beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, and spiders, and has a tiny family (one or two clutches of eggs, with three to six eggs per clutch). But though the lizard chooses its home very carefully, there are certain dangers in the modern age that it couldn’t have taken into account. How was this lizard to know that its specialized shinnery dune habitat lay smack on top of the Permian Basin? And that this basin would become one of the most active oil fields in the U. S.? Yet that is exactly the reason why the sand dune lizard is in immediate danger of extinction.