MIDLAND, Texas— The Center for Biological Diversity filed a request in federal court Tuesday to defend long-overdue Endangered Species Act protections for the dunes sagebrush lizard.

In May 2024 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated the dunes sagebrush lizard as endangered after four decades of delay.

The Center is seeking to intervene in a lawsuit filed by Texas in September to remove protections for the lizards.

“We’ve been fighting for decades to get these little lizards protected and we’re not going to stop now,” said Jason Rylander, legal director of the Center’s Climate Law Institute. “The federal government finally did right by declaring that these rare lizards are being driven to extinction by the oil and gas industry. We won’t let Texas and the Trump administration take back a hard-fought victory for this lizard’s survival.”

The lizards live in a very small area of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico that includes part of the Permian Basin, which over the last decade has been one of world’s fastest-growing oil and gas fields. The 2.5-inch-long species has the second-smallest range of any lizard in North America, inhabiting a rare ecosystem where it hunts insects and spiders in wind-blown dunes. It burrows into the sand beneath low-lying shinnery oak shrubs for protection from extreme temperatures.

More than 95% of the original shinnery oak dunes ecosystem has been destroyed by oil and gas extraction and other development, as well as herbicide spraying to support livestock grazing. Much of the lizards’ remaining habitat is fragmented, preventing them from finding mates beyond those already living close by.

The lizard is further imperiled by burgeoning sand mining operations in the area — a secondary impact of the oil and gas industry, which uses the sand for fracking.

“The dunes sagebrush lizard deserves a chance at survival,” said Rylander. “The tyranny of Trump’s drill-baby-drill agenda is no excuse for an endangered animal to disappear forever.”

Background

Originally identified as a candidate for Endangered Species Act listing in 1982, the lizard waited more than 40 years for federal protection. In 2002 the Center submitted a scientific petition to place the lizard on the endangered species list. Prompted by the Center’s follow-up litigation, the Service proposed to protect the lizard in 2010. However, the agency denied the lizard protection after the Texas Comptroller’s Office developed a non-binding conservation agreement that purported to safeguard some of the animal’s habitat.

When that plan failed, in 2018, the Center again petitioned for protection and the Service issued an initial finding that a listing was warranted. But it took another lawsuit in 2022 to prompt a final rulemaking.

The Service has long failed to provide timely protections to species in need. The entire process of listing species and designating critical habitat is supposed to take two to three years. On average it has taken the Service 12 years, and in many cases decades, to protect qualifying species. At least 47 species have gone extinct while awaiting protection.