Texas lizards and weasels -Editorial Houston Chronicle If we’re not going to protect a Texas species, let’s at least not pretend that we are - via Herp Digest

Sagebrush Lizard Controversy

November 12, 2013 12:38 am 

A threatened reptile brings out the worst in sneaky Texas politics.

The dunes sagebrush lizard isn’t much to look at, and it isn’t easy to find. About three inches long, the brown "habitat specialist” lives only in the root systems of scrubby shinnery oaks, which grow in the desert sand dunes of West Texas and New Mexico. To stay out of the heat, it likes to bury itself.

For the last few years, the lizard has been talked about more than it’s been seen. It’s currently classified as “threatened,” one step below an “endangered species” protected by federal law. And that’s where the oil and gas industry, which has been drilling hot and heavy in the lizard’s home dunes, wants to keep it.

We agree. We don’t want to push a threatened species over the line.

And in its broadest outlines, we like the sound of the deal that the industry proposed a few years ago, as it was persuading the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that really, the lizard didn’t need those big-stick, able-to-disrupt-business protections that come with being an endangered species. Instead of federal protections, why not work out a free-market solution? Why not let oil-and-gas payments reward private landowners who choose to take lizard-protecting measures? More habitat; less hassle for business.

The devil, as usual, is in the details. You’d expect a lizard-monitoring program to be overseen by Texas Parks and Wildlife, which knows something about animals. Instead, it falls under the purview of the Texas comptroller - the state’s bookkeeper and tax collector.

Why? Because that’s what the oil and gas industry wanted. In 2011, at the behest of lobbyists, then-state Rep. Warren Chisum slid the proposal into a fiscal-bill amendment.

Comptroller Susan Combs’ office, of course, knows doodly squat about lizards. So for day-to-day reptile monitoring, the comptroller contracted with a group called Texas Habitat Conservation Foundation - which just happens to have been founded by lobbyists for the Texas Oil and Gas Association, a group that represents petro-giants like Exxon and Chevron. The group is chaired by (wait for it) Warren Chisum, the former state rep who wrote the amendment that gave lizard oversight to the controller’s office and who works these days as a lobbyist for (yes!) the Texas Oil and Gas Association. Chisum says there’s no conflict of interest.

Environmental groups think otherwise. “It’s an example of the fox guarding the henhouse,” grumbled Noah Greenwald, endangered species director of the Center for Biological Diversity. And independent oil producers worry that a group run by lobbyists representing big oil companies will naturally skew lizard protection in a way that favors big companies. (That’s why Rep. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, pushed for a more accountable lizard program.)

Comptroller Combs contends that satellite imagery shows private landowners are keeping up their ends of the deal, but environmental groups are suspicious. And neither they, nor the federal Fish and Wildlife Service, has any way to double-check. The comptroller’s office keeps secret the identities of the landowners who are participating in the program.

This system is nutty. We’re embarrassed that Comptroller Combs - normally a straight shooter and a fan of government transparency - not only defends such a hot mess, but offers it as a model for other states.

Texas shouldn’t be a state that pussyfoots around, hiding sneaky lobbyist-fueled actions from the people. If we say we’re going to protect lizards, we should protect lizards - and we should do it in an open, easy-to-check way, one that doesn’t favor big companies over small ones.

And if we’re not going to protect lizards, let’s at least have the decency not to pretend that we are.