Texas withdraws dunes sagebrush lizard conservation plan - via Herp Digest

By Asher Price 

The Austin America-Statesman, 12/20/18

Aiming to reform a troubled state program designed to stave off federal habitat protections for a rare lizard species in the petroleum-rich Permian Basin, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar in August asked the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to approve a new, beefed-up version meant to address what Hegar’s office called the plan’s “systemic problems.”

But concerned that stewardship of the lizard plan might be transferred out of the comptroller’s office to another entity, one that would keep the weaker plan in place, Hegar quietly informed the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service last month that it was withdrawing the original conservation plan.

In short, rather than allow a company or other state agency to take charge of the plan in such a way that might short-circuit more stringent habitat protections, he unplugged the current conservation plan altogether.

The maneuver is the latest turn over how to protect the dunes sagebrush lizard amid a threat of federal action, and suggests something about the complicated nature of the politics and money involved in endangered species protection in the Trump era.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has yet to make a decision on Hegar’s August proposal.

That proposal eliminates scientifically unsupported conservation options and defines ways for companies to avoid lizard habitat, enacts fees from some companies operating in the lizard habitat to support conservation efforts to offset habitat disturbances and includes incentives to focus industrial activities in degraded or nonhabitat areas.

The 2012 Texas Conservation Plan, shepherded by then-Comptroller Susan Combs, enlisted oil and gas companies to voluntarily help preserve the lizard’s habitat.

Although the plan had succeeded in fending off the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s efforts to designate the animal as endangered - and the strict land-use regulations that would have accompanied it - conservationists criticized it as favoring petroleum interests over the species.

In November Hegar’s office terminated Combs’ conservation plan.

“Since the submission of the new (plan), we understand that the Service has been asked to consider changes to the TCP, or perhaps even transfer administration of it to another entity,” Hegar wrote to Amy Leuders, the regional director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, on Nov. 8. “These requests detract from the effort to replace the TCP with a defensible, durable plan and are not in the best interest of the state, the Service, or the species.”

Hegar’s letter does not say what other entity could take over the conservation plan, but it came as energy companies, including ones that mine sand in the lizard habitat for fracking, a form of natural gas extraction, have pushed back against more stringent rules.

He continued: “The economic growth of the Permian Basin is essential to the economy of the region, the state and the nation. In order to maintain and build on that economic engine, Texas must continue to comply with the Endangered Species Act, while simultaneously providing a framework for our important industries to continue. The new (proposal) proposed by this office is a significant step in that direction and will provide certainty to participants into the future.”

The oil and gas industry had protected less land than Combs had forecast. And the original Texas Conservation Plan appeared to have vastly underestimated the size of dunes sagebrush lizard habitat.

A credit swap program meant to save habitat also turned out to be largely useless. Under the system, oil and gas companies paid a contractor to remove large clumps of mesquite on private ranchland in exchange for permission to excavate on comparably sized lizard habitat on their own drill sites.

Oil and gas companies liked the program. But there often was little consideration as to whether the mesquite removal was being done on land genuinely favorable to the species.

And while the conservation plan called for lizard habitat hit by surface disturbances to be mitigated or repaired - removing abandoned concrete well pads and roads, for example - between 2013 and 2014 the comptroller’s office determined that a foundation monitoring the plan had failed to do the work on several sites.

The dunes sagebrush lizard was first identified as needing protection in 1982. In 2002 the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, petitioned for protection, leading to a 2010 proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to safeguard the lizard as endangered.

The proposal, however, was withdrawn in 2012 because of the conservation plan devised by Combs, who now works at the U.S. Department of Interior.

“The dunes sagebrush lizard needs every ounce of help it can get, but Texas and the oil and gas industry are determined to stand in the way,” Chris Nagano, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diveristy. “The only reason this rare lizard isn’t protected is political interference by the same fossil fuel interests rapidly destroying its habitat.”

In May, the Center for Biological Diversity and Defenders of Wildlife filed a second petition to protect the lizard under the Endangered Species Act. To date the Service has not made a determination on that petition.