Lizard’s Endangered Status Leads Texas AG to Sue Biden Administration

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden’s administration over it listing a rare lizard as endangered earlier this year.
On Monday, Paxton announced a lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and some other officials within the Biden administration for listing the dunes sagebrush lizard as endangered.
The dunes sagebrush lizard makes its home in the sand dunes of the Mescalero-Monahans ecosystem, located about 30 miles west of Odessa. This stretch of West Texas land also overlaps with the state’s largest oil and gas fields.
Biologists have cautioned federal regulators for more than 40 years about the severe threat oil and gas exploration poses to the dunes sagebrush lizard’s habitat. Meanwhile, industry representatives have resisted protections for the reptile, arguing that such a designation would deter companies from drilling in the nation’s most profitable oil and natural gas region.
In May, federal regulators declared the dunes sagebrush lizard endangered, citing the rapid expansion of the oil and gas industry as a serious threat to the species’ survival.
This decision prompted Paxton’s lawsuit, which was announced this week.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s unlawful misuse of environmental law is a backdoor attempt to undermine Texas’s oil and gas industries which help keep the lights on for America,” Paxton said. “I warned that we would sue over this illegal move, and now we will see them in court.”
In a statement, Paxton argued that the lizard’s endangered listing violated the Endangered Species Act. He accused the Fish and Wildlife Service of not using “the best scientific and commercial data” in its decision and claimed the agency overlooked existing conservation efforts aimed at protecting the species.
The dunes sagebrush lizard, measuring just 2.5 inches long, inhabits roughly 4 percent of the 86,000-square-mile Permian Basin, which stretches across Texas and New Mexico, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. In Texas, the species has been identified in Andrews, Crane, Gaines, Ward, and Winkler counties.
A 2023 Fish and Wildlife Service analysis found that the dunes sagebrush lizard is “functionally extinct” across 47 percent of its habitat.
The endangered listing mandates that oil and gas companies avoid areas where the dunes sagebrush lizard resides, but the Fish and Wildlife Service has not yet identified those specific regions as it continues to gather data. Depending on the severity of the violation, companies that violate this rule could face fines of up to $50,000 and potential prison time.
Paxton’s office criticized the Fish and Wildlife Service for not identifying the areas where the lizard resides, leaving operators and landowners in limbo about how they can use their land.
This article includes reporting from the Associated Press.