{"id":348,"date":"2025-02-10T14:10:29","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T15:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/?p=348"},"modified":"2025-02-21T19:12:58","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T19:12:58","slug":"the-tiny-lizard-that-will-test-trumps-drill-baby-drill-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/10\/the-tiny-lizard-that-will-test-trumps-drill-baby-drill-agenda\/","title":{"rendered":"The tiny lizard that will test Trump\u2019s \u201cdrill, baby, drill\u201d agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A rare dunes sagebrush lizard. | Courtesy of Lee Fitzgerald<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While President Donald Trump has caused chaos and confusion in his first few weeks in office, he\u2019s made one thing very clear: His administration will do everything in its power to supercharge oil and gas production.<\/p>\n

That agenda is unwelcome news for a small lizard in West Texas. <\/p>\n

The dunes sagebrush lizard \u2014 a tan, scaly reptile measuring just a few inches long \u2014 lives in the Permian Basin, the largest oil producing region in the country. It\u2019s found nowhere else on Earth. The basin stretches across West Texas and southeastern New Mexico and produces, by some estimates, as much as 40 percent of US oil<\/a>. It\u2019s likely that you\u2019ve traveled in a car or plane using fuel derived from oil in the Permian Basin.<\/p>\n

Drilling for oil and gas, and the infrastructure that supports it, harms the dunes sagebrush lizard, according to more than two decades of research. Roads and well pads damage and fragment the reptile\u2019s habitat, as does the process of mining sand for fracking. These activities are threatening to extinguish the lizard, which is now unable to survive across nearly half of its historic range<\/a>, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, a government agency.<\/p>\n

To stave off extinction, the Fish and Wildlife Service listed the lizard as endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act last spring. The ESA is the nation\u2019s strongest law for protecting wildlife. Under the law, it\u2019s illegal to kill endangered animals and plants (with some exceptions<\/a>) and the government is required to devise and implement a plan to revive their populations. <\/p>\n

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We\u2019d love to hear from you<\/h2>\n

Do you have a story idea or a tip to share? Reach Benji Jones at benji.jones@vox.com<\/a> or at the secure encrypted address benjijones@protonmail.com<\/a>. You can also find him on Signal at @benji.90<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Now, however, environmental advocates fear that federal protections for this lizard \u2014 which were decades in the making \u2014 are at risk. Donald Trump\u2019s agenda for energy dominance<\/a> has allied his administration with the oil industry, which has long viewed regulations to protect rare animals as a barrier to drilling. Especially when they live in oil country.<\/p>\n

That puts this humble lizard in a tough spot. Like several other species<\/a>, it has become a political wedge used to criticize and dismantle environmental regulations that most Americans support<\/a>, according to environmental advocates. And over the next four years it will serve as a test \u2014 of the ESA, and how far the Trump administration is willing to go to undermine the protections it affords. <\/p>\n

Tiny lizard vs. Big Oil<\/h2>\n

To an untrained eye, dunes sagebrush lizards look pretty generic. They\u2019ve got prickly scales, snakelike heads, and long, spindly feet, much like other lizards. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s their home \u2014 and adaptations to it \u2014\u00a0that make them so unique.\u00a0The lizards live in \u201cneighborhoods\u201d within a rare habitat comprising sand dunes and woody shrubs, where they\u2019re known to dive, or swim, under the sand to stay cool. To breed and find food, these animals move between neighborhoods, said <\/strong>Lee Fitzgerald<\/a>, <\/strong>a researcher and professor at Texas A&M University who\u2019s been studying these lizards for more than 30 years. Oil and gas infrastructure, such as access roads and well pads, disrupts this flow by fragmenting the landscape, Fitzgerald said. \u201cWhen they\u2019re isolated, they go extinct locally,\u201d he told Vox. Studies dating back to the \u201990s have shown that there are fewer lizards where you have a higher density of well pads<\/a> and more fragmentation<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Sagebrush<\/p>\n

Fitzgerald loves these lizards. They\u2019re an important piece of a rare duneland ecosystem, he said. Other people in Texas oil country, however, see them as a nuisance \u2014 as only an impediment to development. A decade ago, when the Fish and Wildlife Service first proposed listing the lizard as endangered, Sen. Ted Cruz claimed that the government was using the lizard to shut down oil and gas production. \u201cYou know my view of lizards? They make dern fine boots,\u201d Cruz told the crowd<\/a>, which laughed and applauded. <\/p>\n

And these attitudes have persisted. Shortly after the lizard was listed as endangered, Wayne Christian, commissioner of the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the state\u2019s oil and gas industry, repeated Cruz\u2019s joke<\/a>, laughing. \u201cThis doesn\u2019t have a thing to do with \u2018saving lizards.\u2019 It\u2019s about shutting down US oil and gas production to win political brownie points,\u201d Christian said in a statement<\/a> after the listing. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s a lizard, a chicken, a whale, or a unicorn. Radical environmentalists won\u2019t be satisfied until we all get out [sic] energy from firewood and are living in a cave again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet protecting the lizard isn\u2019t the barrier to oil drilling that companies would have you believe, Fitzgerald said. The area they live in is small, making up about 4 percent of the Permian Basin<\/a>. Plus, techniques like horizontal drilling allow companies to extract oil and gas under lizard habitat without disturbing the surface. In fact dozens of oil and gas firms are already enrolled in voluntary plans to conserve the lizard<\/a> that are approved by the Fish and Wildlife Service. \u201cThe habitat is easy to avoid,\u201d Fitzgerald said. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to achieve conservation of this lizard.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The idea that listing it as endangered would upend the oil and gas industry is not rooted in reality, said Jason Rylander, a <\/strong>senior attorney <\/strong>at the Center for Biological Diversity, <\/strong>an advocacy group that\u2019s been working for decades to conserve the lizard. Instead, Rylander says, conservative leaders in states like Texas are weaponizing the lizard and other endangered species to push a specific narrative: that environmental regulations like the Endangered Species Act are bad for industries like oil and gas and should be made less stringent or dismantled altogether. The lesser prairie chicken, which was listed in 2023<\/a>, is similarly a thorn in the side of many Republicans<\/a> lawmakers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lizard is in a position for being used as a rationale that the Endangered Species Act is bad, even though conserving the lizard is relatively easy,\u201d Fitzgerald told me. <\/p>\n

Ben Shepperd<\/a>, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, a trade group that represents the oil and gas industry, said, \u201cWe have no problem working with regulations to protect species.\u201d He disagreed with the suggestion that the Texas oil industry opposes regulations to protect the dunes sagebrush lizard. \u201cWe strongly believe that conservation and development can work hand in hand,\u201d he told Vox. Shepperd did not respond to follow-up questions asking how those comments align with statements<\/a> by the PBPA that called the proposal to list the lizard an \u201cattack\u201d against \u201cAmerican independence\u201d and the Permian Basin. Shepperd previously said<\/a> he doesn\u2019t think the lizard is in danger of extinction.<\/p>\n

Shepperd told Vox the petroleum industry has been at the \u201cforefront of conservation efforts for multiple species,\u201d spending tens of millions of dollars on efforts to improve habitat and \u201csupport species throughout the ranges.\u201d Those efforts have significantly improved both the habitat and populations of the dunes sagebrush lizard, he said. He did not respond to a follow-up question asking for evidence of improved habitat and population. A 2020 report<\/a> from the American Conservation Foundation on voluntary efforts by the oil and gas industry to conserve the lizard says some companies have changed their operations to avoid impacting the animal\u2019s habitat. <\/p>\n

\"Landscape<\/p>\n

President Trump has not made specific comments about the dunes sagebrush lizard (he has degraded other tiny, endangered animals, such as the delta smelt<\/a>), but he aims to make it easier to exploit important wildlife habitat for oil and gas. On his first day in office, the president signaled that his government may use what he spuriously<\/a> called a \u201cnational energy emergency<\/a>\u201d to bypass the standard protocols to protect wildlife under the Endangered Species Act. Trump has also called on<\/a> each government agency to \u201csuspend, revise, or rescind\u201d actions that are \u201cunduly burdensome\u201d to energy exploration and development. Doug Burgum, Trump\u2019s secretary of the Interior Department \u2014 which oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service \u2014 has already signed secretarial orders<\/a> that aim to boost fossil fuel extraction over endangered species protections.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lesser prairie chicken and dunes lizard are our test cases,\u201d said Rylander, who is also the legal director of the Center\u2019s Climate Law Institute. <\/strong>\u201cThey\u2019re both recently listed species in the oil country, and both have been delayed in their listings for decades, and now they’re finally on the list. What is the Trump administration going to do about that?\u201d <\/p>\n

How the Trump administration might mess with endangered species<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The Endangered Species Act is considered the strongest wildlife law in the US, and among the strongest in the world. And it explicitly prohibits the government from considering economic factors when it determines whether or not a species is endangered.<\/p>\n

Yet the protections it affords aren\u2019t bulletproof. <\/p>\n

Last fall, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Interior Department and the Fish and Wildlife Service<\/a> over the dunes sagebrush lizard. The suit \u2014 which asks the court to vacate the endangered listing \u2014 alleges, among other things, that the government didn\u2019t rely on the best available data to evaluate the lizard\u2019s extinction risk. To determine that risk, the Fish and Wildlife Service looked at how much healthy habitat the lizard has left, not at the total number of lizards and how it\u2019s changed over time. Making the determination based on habitat availability instead of population size is inadequate, the suit alleges. <\/p>\n

Fitzgerald, the nation\u2019s leading expert on the lizard, disagrees. You don\u2019t need to know the exact number of lizards to figure out that they\u2019re in decline, he said, especially because they depend on a very specific type of habitat. The lizard is endangered, he said. <\/p>\n

Paxton\u2019s suit also alleges that the federal government did not fully consider existing voluntary agreements<\/a> by companies to conserve the animal, such as through horizontal drilling. Rylander of the Center for Biological Diversity says that such agreements to protect the lizard population are voluntary, untested, and lack oversight. The Fish and Wildlife Service, meanwhile, asserts<\/a> that the risk of extinction for the lizard is high even with these efforts in place. \u201cI don\u2019t think the Texas arguments are particularly strong,\u201d Rylander said of the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Paxton\u2019s office did not respond to a request for comment. The Fish and Wildlife Service declined to comment. <\/p>\n

There are a few ways this could play out, Rylander said. One is that the district court, where this was filed, rules in favor of Texas and moves to throw out the listing; the proceedings would likely take years and it would be fought by groups like the Center for Biological Diversity. Another is that the Texas judge rules in favor of the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the listing stays. <\/p>\n

The Fish and Wildlife Service, under the Trump administration, could alternatively try to settle the lawsuit with Texas by agreeing to reconsider its decision to list the lizard as endangered. That could lead to delisting, if the government could somehow prove the species isn\u2019t at risk of extinction. \u201cThe Trump administration would have to justify a change of position in a new rulemaking process \u2014 which could take a year or more,\u201d Rylander said. <\/p>\n

The agency could also simply admit a legal error in making the decision to list the lizard, vacating the listing while it reconsiders the ruling. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s likely that the federal government will reconsider the listing, said Gabriel Eckstein, a law professor at Texas A&M University. \u201cThey\u2019re going to be pressured to either undo it, reverse it, reconsider \u2014 I\u2019m not sure which,\u201d Eckstein said. <\/p>\n

Another possible outcome, though more unusual, would involve Congress. Lawmakers could pass a bill that includes a rider to delist the lizard or the prairie chicken. This is how a population of gray wolves in the Rocky Mountains was delisted in 2011: A congressional spending bill included a rider calling on Idaho and Montana to delist the gray wolf. <\/p>\n

Andrew Bowman, the president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, a nonprofit advocacy group, said that he anticipates such legislative riders as one tool used in the broader threats to wildlife in the next few years. Bowman also fears a more wholesale dismantling of the Fish and Wildlife Service that would have far greater impacts on wildlife in the US. \u201cIt takes a lot of money and time to do listings, to do recovery plans, to designate critical habitat,\u201d he said. \u201cWill they just find a way to hollow out the agency so that the law basically becomes ineffective?\u201d<\/p>\n

How Trump and his agencies ultimately approach this small lizard, if at all, will reveal how far his agencies will go to undermine the Endangered Species Act. Will this reptile be sacrificed in the name of Trump\u2019s energy dominance agenda \u2014 opening other endangered species to threats \u2014 or will the letter and spirit of the law, as it exists now, prevail? In all likelihood, this reptile will remain the subject of litigation for years to come, all the while inching closer and closer to extinction. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe lizard is a phenomenal example of the way that politics affects endangered species protection,\u201d Rylander said. \u201cThe intent of Congress and the Act to list species based solely on the best scientific and commercial evidence available is continually thwarted by political and policy decisions across administrations.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A rare dunes sagebrush lizard. | Courtesy of Lee Fitzgerald While President Donald Trump has caused chaos and confusion in his first few weeks in office, he\u2019s made one thing very clear: His administration will do everything in its power to supercharge oil and gas production. That agenda is unwelcome news for a small lizard…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":354,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions\/354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}