Landowners harboring threatened or endangered species on their property will soon be facing stricter scrutiny and the possibility of tougher land-use restrictions under new Endangered Species Act (ESA) regulations released by the Biden administration April 5.
Biden’s political appointees at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) rewrote Trump-era rules finalized in 2019, which emphasized species recovery over federal micromanagement of private property. The new rules will take effect on May 6.
A key element of the Trump-era policy was its handling of areas unoccupied by a species at risk. Under the Trump rule, for an unoccupied area to be considered essential to a specie’s recovery, USFWS had to “determine that there was a reasonable certainty both that the area will contribute to the conservation of the species and that the area contains one or more of those physical or biological features essential to the conservation of the species.”
“In other words,” the Public Lands Council points out, “USFWS could not designate critical habitat in an unoccupied area that could not in the future actually support the life of a species. Now, the agency may designate critical habitat in any occupied area that it believes is ‘essential for the conservation of the species.’”
This change greatly expands the amount of land that can be brought under USFWS control, enabling “critical habitat” to be designated anywhere USFWS determines a species is at risk, including from such purely hypothetical factors as climate change.
Consideration of Economic Impact
Another radical change coming to ESA enforcement concerns the economic impact of a listing. Previously, regulations under the ESA did not explicitly prohibit federal officials from considering the economic impact of listing or habitat decisions. Such determinations were to be based on “the best available scientific and commercial information.” No more. The Biden regulations now explicitly state that determination on listing status and habitat designations must be made “without reference to economic or other impacts.”
In other words, USFWS officials are now free to make such designations without any consideration of how they will affect the livelihoods of rural communities located near a “critical habitat.”
Blurring the Difference Between Threatened and Endangered Species
When it was enacted in 1973, the ESA specified that species designated as threatened were to be treated differently than those at higher risk or endangered. Over the decades, however, the difference gradually disappeared, meaning the land-use restrictions imposed on property owners harboring a named species – whether threatened or endangered — were about the same. The 2019 Trump reforms that section of the statute to its original intent. This is crucial when it comes to an incidental take of a species because the blurring of distinctions raises landowners’ potential liability.
While the Biden revisions do not preclude USFWS from issuing species-specific rules to exempt certain practices from the prohibition of take, the new language will enable federal officials to largely ignore the statutory difference between threatened and endangered. In effect, the Biden administration has reimposed the “blanket” approach to species protection, putting the same prohibitions in place whether the plant or animal is threatened or endangered. This blurring of an important distinction constitutes a major gain for an administrative state eager to throw its weight around whenever the opportunity presents itself.
The new rules will provide a boost to the White House’s “30×30” plan, under which “at least” 30 percent of the nation’s land and water are to be “protected” by 2030. Increasing the amount of land set aside indefinitely for the recovery of a species is one of the ways the administration can achieve its 30-percent goal by the end of the decade.
Court Challenges
In a similar vein, the Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced how it intends to comply – or not comply – with the Supreme Court’s May 2023 Sackett v. EPA ruling, which limited EPA’s power to regulate certain bodies of water, including wetlands, under the Clean Water Act. EPA’s effort to circumvent the Sackett decision is being challenged in court, and the administration’s new ESA rules may soon be facing a similar fate.
Note by Kip Hansen — 22 February 2024 — 1600 words/8 minutes
We are constantly bombarded by news about “species” – Endangered Species, Threatened Species, Vanishing Species, Loss of Species such as “Researchers estimate that the current rate of species loss varies between 100 and 10,000 times the background extinction rate” [ source: Britannica Feb 15, 2024 ]. Let me clarify that: Britannica says that the Earth is losing species at a rate of 100 to 50,000 species per year.
How can such an impossibly wide range even be considered an “estimate”? Easy! There is no agreed upon scientific definition of what a species is – so there can be no count either of existing species nor of species loss or extinction, in the present or in the past.
There are ‘equally good’ estimates of the number of existing species: 8.7 million. “That is a new, estimated total number of species on Earth—the most precise calculation ever offered—with 6.5 million species found on land and 2.2 million dwelling in the ocean depths.” [ source ]
or
“As of 2021, we have identified and describedapproximately 2.13 million species.“ “Estimates suggest that around 20% of described species may be undiscovered synonyms [the same species under a different name]. Adjusting for this, the actual number of described species might be closer to 1.7 million.” Taking into account estimates of undiscovered or undescribed species: “The true number of species remains elusive. Estimates vary widely: 5 to 10 million eukaryotes (excluding viruses and bacteria). Numbers exceeding 100 million or as low as 3 million.” [ source ]
So, here’s the summary of exert knowledge:
Number of Species
8.7 million or maybe 2.13 million or maybe 1.7 million or maybe 100 million or maybe 3 million.
Of which we are reportedly losing between 100 to 50,000 per year.
He touches on the number-of-species issue giving: “So far, researchers have named about 2.3 million species, but there are millions — perhaps even billions — left to be discovered.” So, to the above summary we might have to add “or maybe billions.”
Zimmer goes on to explain:
“As if this quest isn’t hard enough, biologists cannot agree on what a species is. A 2021 survey found that practicing biologists used 16 different approaches to categorizing species. Any two of the scientists picked at random were overwhelmingly likely to use different ones.
“Everyone uses the term, but no one knows what it is,” said Michal Grabowski, a biologist at the University of Lodz in Poland.
The debate over species is more than an academic pastime. In the current extinction crisis, scientists urgently need to take stock of the world’s biological diversity.” [ NY Times as above ]
Zimmer is not kidding about the 16 major categories of opinions that biologists hold about the definition of what constitutes a species. In Current Biology, Sean Stankowski and Mark Ravinet, wrote “Quantifying the use of species concepts” in which they describe the “species problem” this way:
“Dozens of species concepts are currently recognized, but we lack a concrete understanding of how much researchers actually disagree and the factors that cause them to think differently. To address this, we used a survey to quantify the species problem for the first time. The results indicate that the disagreement is extensive: two randomly chosen respondents will most likely disagree on the nature of species.”
Here is their chart (see the .pdf file for a better look):
Why do we even think about “what is a species?” As we started out, the world is agog about species, loss of, discovery of, rediscovery of and extinction of.
Governments, national and international, have been passing laws and signing treaties dealing with the protection of species deemed threatened by or endangered by extinction. These treaties and laws require governments to protect and save these species.
How can we determine what to save if we don’t even know what we are talking about?
In the United States, we have the famous (or infamous, opinions vary) Endangered Species Act (ESA). It is available, in all its glory, in a .pdf file available here. Hey, there’s a law and any lawyer (even a poor one) will tell you that laws are required to have clear-cut definitions of terms used in that law – least they be deemed “ambiguous” and in danger of being invalidated by the courts.
So, surely, the ESA defines species, right? Let’s see…. Section 3. Definitions— that should have it. Here are the pertinent points of Section 3:
(16) The term “species” includes any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants, and any distinct population segment of any species of vertebrate fish or wildlife which interbreeds when mature.
(6) The term “endangered species” means any species which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range other than a species of the Class Insecta determined by the Secretary to constitute a pest whose protection under the provisions of this Act would present an overwhelming and overriding risk to man.
(20) The term “threatened species” means any species which is likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range.
Wait a minute! Surely there is a definition of “species” other than the fact that it is meant include “any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants, and any distinct population segment of any species of vertebrate fish or wildlife which interbreeds when mature.” We get a fine definition of “a subspecies or a distinct population” but not the primary definition of a species.
Does it matter? Don’t all those taxonomists and biologists agree, at least generally, that a species is a population “which interbreeds when mature.”
Nope again, that is just the high-school version (ask any A-non-I chat) of what it a species is. And, in the eyes of biologists, it only includes two of the 16 major divisions of species concepts according to Stankowski and Ravinet :
Biological Species Concept I (BSCI) (Mayr 1942, 1995) Species are a group of interbreeding natural populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups
Biological Species Concept II (BSCII) (Coyne & Orr 2004) Species are groups of interbreeding natural populations that are substantially but not necessarily completely reproductively isolated from other such groups
Note that it does not include the basic Darwinian definition, which is:
Darwinian Species Concept (DSC) (Jolly 2014) A species is an evolutionary lineage, or lineage segment, that is phenotypically distinguishable from all other such units and is usefully distinguished in scientific discourse.
There are 13 others, found in Stankowski’s Supplemental Materials, for those wishing to disappear down the species rabbit hole.
I suggest reading Carl Zimmer’s piece in the NY Times (this link should be good even if you don’t subscribe to the Times) to see what all the fuss is about. The Mass Extinction types are worried about what will happen if they spend their time trying to figure out what a species really is:
“Thomas Wells, a botanist at the University of Oxford, is concerned that debates about the nature of species are slowing down the work of discovering new ones. Taxonomy is traditionally a slow process, especially for plants. It can take decades for a new species of plant to be formally named in a scientific publication after it is first discovered. That sluggish pace is unacceptable, he said, when three out of four undescribed species of plants are already threatened with extinction.” [ from NY Times – Zimmer ]
How Wells can know, absent a solid working definition of “species” how many of the millions, or perhaps billions, of not-yet discovered and not-yet described “somethings we might decide to call species” are “already threatened with extinction” is a mystery to me. I might even call that opinion unscientific.
Accounts of the misuse of the U.S.’s ESA are widely known – like protecting the Red Wolf which is a hybrid of the Gray Wolf and Coyote as a “species” by breeding captured animals that appeared to be Red Wolves to supplement the existing but shrinking population, rejecting those with too much wolf or too much coyote genes. This has been going on for 50 years. More importantly, the ESA is widely used by radical environmental groups to block development projects (like pipelines) to which they object for other unrelated reasons (see the Prebles Meadow Jumping Mouse). Readers can supply local examples.
Bottom Lines:
1. The “Species Problem” is still going strong and is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.
2. That means that there will be those who take advantage of the ambiguity of species definitions to use the Endangered Species Act – ESA – (in the U.S.) and its international counterparts to forward other agendas.
3. The U.S. ESA is intentionally so broad that it could be conceivably be stretched to demanding protection of anthropogenically created sub-populations of rare animals and plants.
4. We need pragmatic reform of the U.S. ESA and re-evaluation of international treaties concerning endangered animals and plants.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment:
We have had good coverage here at WUWT of the species problem and the so-called 6th Mass Extinction event from several authors including the Willis and Jim Steele.
The Endangered Species Act is a well-meaning but poorly written and perversely implemented piece of legislation and is desperate for reform. It lacks any boundaries for biological significance and pragmatic application.
Specious means: “superficially plausible, but actually wrong.”
Carl Zimmer over at the New York Times penned a misleading story of speciation, using the polar bear as an example. It explains polar bear evolution based on a genetic interpretation that ignores the fossil record, bear behaviour, and geological history. [h/t Kip Hanson].
In my opinion, this kind of ‘science communication’ is more misleading than enlightening because it fails to alert readers to the fact that the topic is actually more complicated and gives the impression that the author considers readers too stupid to understand a more accurate explanation.
Polar Bear Evolution does a better job for those who are really interested in the process: it doesn’t hide the complicated nature of speciation or polar bear evolution. It doesn’t pretend to present “the truth” but explains how a good scientist gets to a plausible explanation that best fits the evidence.
In the 1940s, Ernst Mayr, a German ornithologist, tried solving this problem with a new definition of species based on how animals breed.If two animals couldn’t breed with each other, Mayr argued, then they were separate species.
By “breed with each other,” he meant hybridize. But Mayr also acknowledged that occasional hybridization between species does not negate his concept that good species generally don’t interbreed, which Zimmer doesn’t bother to say or doesn’t know. The issue for polar bears and brown bears (as for many other good species pairs), is how often hybridization actually happens.
What we know through observation and genetic analysis is that hybridization between polar bears and brown bears is not only very rare but it only goes one way. In the wild, hybridization always involves a male brown bear (aka grizzly) and a female polar bear, even in second-generation hybrids (see image below) and this photo essay. In Polar Bear Evolution, I explain this in detail, which comes down to differenced in dominance behaviour between the two closely-related species. Similar “one-way” hybridization is common in many species pairs for the same reason: the less dominant species is virtually always the female partner when two otherwise good species come together at mating time.
Shared genes don’t always mean hybridization
The next part of Zimmer’s article gets into the genetic basis of speciation, which has been recently confounded by claims of widespread hybridization, which he begins with an example from polar bear evolution (my bold):
You don’t have to be a mammalogist to understand that polar bears and brown bears are different. Just one look at their white and brown coats will do.
The difference in their colors is the result of their ecological adaptations. White polar bears blend into their Arctic habitats, where they hunt for seals and other prey. Brown bears adapted for life on land further south. The differences are so distinct that paleontologists can distinguish fossils of the two species going back hundreds of thousands of years.
And yet the DNA inside those ancient bones is revealing an astonishing history of interbreeding between polar bears and brown bears. After the two lineages split about half a million years ago, they exchanged DNA for thousands of years. They then became more distinct, but about 120,000 years ago they underwent another extraordinary exchange of genes.
Between 25,000 and 10,000 years ago, the bears interbred in several parts of their range. The exchanges have left a significant imprint on bears today: About 10 percent of the DNA in brown bears comes from polar bears.”
Zimmer is citing the work of Ming-Shan Wang and colleagues (2022) as his sole reference to explaining polar bear evolution. As I explain in my book, Wang and colleagues should have admitted that the evidence of shared genes they found in polar bears and brown bears could mean that ancient hybridization events took place OR that both species retained some genes from a recent ancestor they both have in common (e.g. Cronin et al. 1991, 2014; Kutchera 2014; Kumar 2017). They preferred the hybridization interpretation because it makes a more interesting and dramatic story but that doesn’t make it true.
And as Zimmer’s additional examples show, this “hybridization” story is becoming the preferred explanation much more often, including for some groups of birds, which is creating a confusing situation. It appears more and more geneticists are conveniently forgetting or ignoring the fact that shared genes do not necessarily mean ancient hybridization.
When shared genes crop up, you need to look at more evidence to get the bigger picture, as I’ve done in for polar bears my book, summarized in this blog post. You need to look at dominance behaviour, as explained above, as well as the fossil record and geological history.
I show that polar bears could not have evolved 500 thousand years ago (kya) because at that time brown bears did not exist in most areas of Eurasia and it was also an interglacial period, so there were no continental ice sheets to push brown bears offshore onto sea ice. The fossil evidence of brown bears is excellent and we know it was not until about 200kya, after a long warm interglacial period, that brown bears were living across Eurasia from Britain to Kamchatka, which set up conditions during the next severe Ice Age for polar bears to split off as a new species when continental ice sheets moved down from the Arctic.
The evidence suggests the most plausible time for the rise of the polar bear as a new species was about 140kya at the height of the severe MIS 6 glacial period (see below, from Crockford 2023a).
The genetic evidence for timing precisely when polar bears arose varies greatly among more than a dozen distinct studies, and Zimmer cites only the most recent one (Wang et al. 2022) as if it must necessarily be the most accurate. He could at least have acknowledged that different studies existed. The chart below, from my book, summarizes the suggested timing of polar bear speciation from these studies (“T & S” is Talbot and Shields 1996):
Geneticists have recently made some very bold statements about polar bear evolution, see here and here, often to support an interpretation that implicates future predictions of catastrophic global warming. My research over more than 20 years shows that while genetics has been able to give us some critical insights into evolution, it still cannot provide any kind of plausible explanation for exactly how or why speciation actually happens (Crockford 2023b).
Distinguishing species from subspecies, as Zimmer explains, is a contentious issue but it isn’t likely to go away any time soon.
References
Bidon T., Janke, A., Fain, S. et al. 2014. Brown and polar bear Y chromosomes reveal extensive male-biased gene flow within brother lineages. Molecular Biology and Evolution 31(6):1353–1363.
Bidon, T., Schreck, N., Hailer, F., et al. 2015. Genome-wide search identifies 1.9MB from the polar bear Y chromosome for evolutionary analysis. Genome Biology and Evolution 7(7):2010-2011.
Cahill, J.A., Green, R.E., Fulton, T.L., et al. 2013. Genomic evidence for island population conversion resolves conflicting theories of polar bear evolution. PLoS Genetics 9(3): e1003345.
Crockford, S.J. 2023a. Polar Bear Evolution: A Model for How New Species Arise. Amazon Digital Services, Victoria. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1778038328
Cronin, M.A., Amstrup, S.C. and Garner, G.W. 1991. Interspecific and intraspecific mitochondrial DNA variation in North American bears (Ursus). Canadian Journal of Zoology69:2985-2992.
Cronin, M.A., Rincon, G., Meredith, R.W., et al. 2014. Molecular phylogeny and SNP variation of polar bears (Ursus maritimus), brown bears (U. arctos), and black bears (U. americanus) derived from genome sequences. Journal of Heredity 105(3):312–323.
Davison, J., Ho, S.Y.W., Brayk, S.C., et al. 2011. Late-Quaternary biogeographic scenarios for the brown bear (Ursus arctos), a wild mammal model species. Quaternary Science Review 30:418–430.
Edwards, C.J., Suchard, M.A., Lemey, P., et al. 2011. Ancient hybridization and an Irish origin for the modern polar bear matriline. Current Biology21:1251–1258.
Hailer, F. 2015. Introgressive hybridization: Brown bears as vectors for polar bear alleles. Molecular Ecology 24(6):1161–1163.
Hassanin, A. 2015. The role of Pleistocene glaciations in shaping the evolution of polar and brown bears. Evidence from a critical review of mitochondrial and nuclear genome analyses. Comptes Rendus Biologies 338:494-501.
Kumar, V., Lammers, F., Bidon, T., et al. 2017. The evolutionary history of bears is characterized by gene flow across species. Scientific Reports 7:46487
Kutschera, V.E., T. Bidon, F. Hailer, J.L. et al. 2014. Bears in a forest of gene trees: Phylogenetic inference is complicated by incomplete lineage sorting and gene flow. Molecular Biology and Evolution 31:2004–2017.
Kurtén, B. 1968.Pleistocene Mammals of Europe. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.
Lan, T., Leppälä, K., Tomlin, C., et al., including Lindqvist, C. 2022. Insights into bear evolution from a Pleistocene polar bear genome.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 119(24):e2200016119.
Lindqvist, C., Schuster, S.C., Sun, Y., et al. 2010. Complete mitochondrial genome of a Pleistocene jawbone unveils the origin of polar bear. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA107:5053-5057.
Liu, S., Lorenzen, E.D., and Fumagalli, M. 2014. Population genomics reveal recent speciation and rapid evolutionary adaptation in polar bears. Cell157:785-794.
Miller, W., Schuster, S.C., Welch, A.J., et al. 2012. Polar and brown bear genomes reveal ancient admixture and demographic footprints of past climate change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109(36):E2382–E2390.
Talbot, S.L. and Shields, G.F. 1996. Phylogeography of brown bears (Ursus arctos) of Alaska and paraphyly within the Ursidae. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 5:477–494.
Wang, M.-S., Murray, G.G.R., Mann, D., et al. 2022. A polar bear paleogenome reveals extensive ancient gene flow from polar bears into brown bears. Nature Ecology and Evolution 6:936–944.
Yu L., Li Y.-W., Ryder O.A. and Zhang Y. 2007. Analysis of complete mitochondrial genome sequences increases phylogenetic resolution of bears (Ursidae), a mammalian family that experienced rapid speciation. BMC Evolutionary Biology 7:198–209.
December 23, 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by President Richard M. Nixon. The statute has put enormous power into the hands of bureaucrats at the two federal agencies that administer it – the Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). It has also been adroitly used by environmental groups who have sued the federal government under the ESA to stop projects not of their liking through the broadest possible designation of a “critical habitat” for a plant or animal said to be either threatened or endangered.
But on the ESA’s stated goal of “recovering” species at risk, the law has been a spectacular failure, according to a new report from the Western Caucus Foundation. The report, “The Endangered Species Act at 50,” was written by Robert Gordon. Active in environmental policy for over 30 years, Gordon has held many high-level positions, including senior advisor to the director of the U.S. Geological Survey, deputy assistant secretary of policy management at the Department of Interior, and senior advisor on endangered species for the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources.
“Unfortunately, at the half-century mark, with the listing of 1,667 species as threatened or endangered species, there are only 62 officially ‘recovered’ species” Gordon points out. “Of these, 36 – nearing 60% – are not real conservation ‘success stories.’ These ‘recoveries’ are hollow, as they are inaccurate proclamations attributable to an erroneous original determination that the species was endangered or threatened. The ESA’s poor showing is compounded by the fact that for some species that have been recovered, the recovery is not primarily or even substantially attributable to the ESA.”
“Scientific Integrity Problem”
Relying almost exclusively on the federal government’s own data, the report uncovers widespread dishonesty about what the public is told about the ESA:
“More than half of the 62 ‘recoveries’ are not legitimate and owe their delisting primarily to the use of erroneous data or analysis to list the species.
Disguising species added to the list as ‘recoveries’ has been a long-standing practice.
The same deception has occurred with many species that are proposed for delisting or that have been downlisted and claimed as evidence of ESA effectiveness.
USFWS ceased reporting other measurements (in its biannual Report to Congress) that could have provided an additional yardstick for measuring progress and, instead, substituted bureaucratic fluff.
The listing standards, the process, or both, have led to more than twice as many wrongly listed species as recovered species.
Continuously mislabeling species as ‘recovered’ reveals a scientific integrity problem in the implementation of the ESA.”
“These errors are not without consequence,” Gordon points out in the report. “Each mistake consumes money and time through required bureaucratic actions. Many of these mistakes remained on the List for decades and resulted in regulatory burdens and economic costs. Not only does misreporting these species as ‘recovered,’ hide the ESA’s true conservation record, but it also obscures that waste of conservation resources, and the economic impacts and regulatory burdens on private property owners were imposed on the basis of bad data. Officially proclaiming these errors as recoveries resulted in more waste than would have occurred if the species had been properly delisted on the grounds of original data error. The deceptive record hinders Congressional oversight and misrepresents the program to the public.”
The report points out that the mislabeling of species as “recovered” has been going on for decades. “As far back as 1988, the Government Accounting Office reported this regarding three birds found on the islands of Palau. GAO reported, “although officially designated as recovered, the [Palus owl, dove and flycatcher] owe their ‘recovery’ more to the discovery of additional birds than to successful recovery efforts.”
Gordon cites several recent cases in which FWS has been less than candid in its use of the term “recovery.’ One egregious example is the tiny Monito gecko, whose numbers were put as low as 18 by one survey, earning it a spot on the Endangered Species List. That survey, however, was taken during the day. It was later learned that the Monito gecko is nocturnal, and its estimated population was raised to 7,661. In 2019, the gecko was declared “recovered” by the FWS. (RELATED: BONNER COHEN: Elites Have Come Up With Their Greatest Excuse Yet To Suppress The Rest Of Us)
When listing the running buffalo clover in 1987, FWS reported that it was “one of the rarest members of the North American flora,” with just four known individual plants existing in one county, in one state. “By the time it was delisted as a ‘recovered species’ in 2021, 175 populations, in more than in more than 80 counties and in six states – with one population numbering more than 60,000 – had been found,” the report notes.
“Dismal Recovery Record”
The lessons to be drawn from the institutionalized deception practiced by ESA bureaucrats are clear.
“Congressional oversight committees should take a hard look at the data and the science used in listings and delistings,” Gordon recommends. “This dismal recovery record further reinforces the need to modernize the Act so that it can be focused on effectively conserving legitimately threatened and endangered species.”
Bonner Russell Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT.
Sceloporus undulatus, Lookout Mountain Trail on the northeast side of Glenwood Springs, 39.551 -107.314, Garfield County, Colorado, 15 Jun 2008.
Officials at the Department of Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) are within weeks of deciding whether to list a small, light-brown lizard as either threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
The dunes sagebrush lizard was proposed for listing under the ESA in late June, giving the public 60 days to submit comments to the FWS. Swamped by comments opposed to the listing, the FWS extended the comment period for an additional 30 days, until Oct. 2. In 2018, the Center for Biological Diversity CBD) petitioned the FWS to add the lizard to the endangered species list, and – after five years of study and bureaucratic inertia – a final decision is expected this fall.
As fate would have it, the lizard’s habitat in southeastern New Mexico and West Texas overlaps with the Permian Basin, home to America’s most productive oil and gas fields. The Permian Basin produces up to 5.8 million barrels of oil per day and has a sizeable impact on the economies of both states.
Fearful that an ESA listing for the lizard would impose strict land-use restrictions on the area, the oil and gas industry, joined by cattle ranchers, has argued that voluntary community conservation efforts to protect the creature are more effective than the heavy hand of the ESA.
In comments submitted Aug. 25 to the FWS, Tim Tarpley, president of the Energy Workforce and Technology Council, said the listing would impede planning and cause delays for the energy sector., without benefiting the lizard. The council represents 250 companies and over 600,00 workers, he noted.
Voluntary Conservation Agreements
Tarpley also pointed out that about 1.9 million acres of land in New Mexico are enrolled in what are known as candidate conservation agreements, under which landowners undertake certain practices that protect the lizard’s habitat, obviating the need for ESA-style land-use restrictions.
“While the Sagebrush Lizard favors the welcoming landscape of Texas and New Mexico, this same habitat plays home to our nation’s most critical oil and gas developments,” he said in his comments (CarlsbadCurrent Argus, Sept. 12). “Under these agreements, the industry has voluntarily committed to implementing practices that reduce or even remove threats to the lizard.”
“Placement of the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard on the endangered species list will further reduce production and development opportunities across our robust energy industry jobs in the region and infringe on property rights,” Tarpley added.
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, voiced similar concerns in her Aug. 4 comments to the FWS.
“The proposed Rule stands to have a significant impact on Alliance members’ business planning and operations by increasing operational costs, delaying project timeframes, and limiting or precluding operations in certain areas.”
The New Mexico Cattle Growers Association also urged the FWS to forego a listing, citing its effect on agriculture.
“Given the extensive work that has been done to protect this species in this state and the effectiveness those actions have had, it would be improper to list the dunes sagebrush lizard as threatened or endangered in New Mexico,” Loren Patterson, the association’s president, wrote in his comments, as reported by the Carlsbad Current Argus.
Adult dunes sagebrush lizards are about 2.5 inches long and spend their lives in the region’s low-lying shinney oak shrubs, where they hunt insects and spiders and have some protection from the weather and predators. Their habitat is the second-smallest of any lizard species in North America.
“We won’t stand by while the last dunes sagebrush lizards disappear,” said the Center for Biological Diversity’s Michael Robinson in a statement last year. “Even as the oil and gas industry ruins our climate, it’s also destroying the lizard’s last home. Protection under the Endangered Species Act is this unique animal’s last hope.”
The Center for Biological Diversity may just get its way. Biden administration appointees at the FWS are every bit as hostile to the oil and gas industry and cattle ranchers as is the CBD. Adding the lizard to the endangered species list will reduce fossil-fuel production in the Permian Basin, something both want.
Bonner R. Cohen, Ph. D., is a senior policy analyst with CFACT, where he focuses on natural resources, energy, property rights, and geopolitical developments. Articles by Dr. Cohen have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Investor’s Busines Daily, The New York Post, The Washington Examiner, The Washington Times, The Hill, The Epoch Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Miami Herald, and dozens of other newspapers around the country.
He has been interviewed on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, NBC News, NPR, BBC, BBC Worldwide Television, N24 (German-language news network), and scores of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada.
He has testified before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, and the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee. Dr. Cohen has addressed conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Bangladesh.
He has a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a Ph. D. – summa cum laude – from the University of Munich.
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Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
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Textvorschlag: Wenn Besucher Kommentare auf der Website schreiben, sammeln wir die Daten, die im Kommentar-Formular angezeigt werden, außerdem die IP-Adresse des Besuchers und den User-Agent-String (damit wird der Browser identifiziert), um die Erkennung von Spam zu unterstützen.
Aus deiner E-Mail-Adresse kann eine anonymisierte Zeichenfolge erstellt (auch Hash genannt) und dem Gravatar-Dienst übergeben werden, um zu prüfen, ob du diesen benutzt. Die Datenschutzerklärung des Gravatar-Dienstes findest du hier: https://automattic.com/privacy/. Nachdem dein Kommentar freigegeben wurde, ist dein Profilbild öffentlich im Kontext deines Kommentars sichtbar.
Medien
Textvorschlag: Wenn du ein registrierter Benutzer bist und Fotos auf diese Website lädst, solltest du vermeiden, Fotos mit einem EXIF-GPS-Standort hochzuladen. Besucher dieser Website könnten Fotos, die auf dieser Website gespeichert sind, herunterladen und deren Standort-Informationen extrahieren.
Cookies
Textvorschlag: Wenn du einen Kommentar auf unserer Website schreibst, kann das eine Einwilligung sein, deinen Namen, E-Mail-Adresse und Website in Cookies zu speichern. Dies ist eine Komfortfunktion, damit du nicht, wenn du einen weiteren Kommentar schreibst, all diese Daten erneut eingeben musst. Diese Cookies werden ein Jahr lang gespeichert.
Falls du ein Konto hast und dich auf dieser Website anmeldest, werden wir ein temporäres Cookie setzen, um festzustellen, ob dein Browser Cookies akzeptiert. Dieses Cookie enthält keine personenbezogenen Daten und wird verworfen, wenn du deinen Browser schließt.
Wenn du dich anmeldest, werden wir einige Cookies einrichten, um deine Anmeldeinformationen und Anzeigeoptionen zu speichern. Anmelde-Cookies verfallen nach zwei Tagen und Cookies für die Anzeigeoptionen nach einem Jahr. Falls du bei der Anmeldung „Angemeldet bleiben“ auswählst, wird deine Anmeldung zwei Wochen lang aufrechterhalten. Mit der Abmeldung aus deinem Konto werden die Anmelde-Cookies gelöscht.
Wenn du einen Artikel bearbeitest oder veröffentlichst, wird ein zusätzlicher Cookie in deinem Browser gespeichert. Dieser Cookie enthält keine personenbezogenen Daten und verweist nur auf die Beitrags-ID des Artikels, den du gerade bearbeitet hast. Der Cookie verfällt nach einem Tag.
Eingebettete Inhalte von anderen Websites
Textvorschlag: Beiträge auf dieser Website können eingebettete Inhalte beinhalten (z. B. Videos, Bilder, Beiträge etc.). Eingebettete Inhalte von anderen Websites verhalten sich exakt so, als ob der Besucher die andere Website besucht hätte.
Diese Websites können Daten über dich sammeln, Cookies benutzen, zusätzliche Tracking-Dienste von Dritten einbetten und deine Interaktion mit diesem eingebetteten Inhalt aufzeichnen, inklusive deiner Interaktion mit dem eingebetteten Inhalt, falls du ein Konto hast und auf dieser Website angemeldet bist.
Mit wem wir deine Daten teilen
Textvorschlag: Wenn du eine Zurücksetzung des Passworts beantragst, wird deine IP-Adresse in der E-Mail zur Zurücksetzung enthalten sein.
Wie lange wir deine Daten speichern
Textvorschlag: Wenn du einen Kommentar schreibst, wird dieser inklusive Metadaten zeitlich unbegrenzt gespeichert. Auf diese Art können wir Folgekommentare automatisch erkennen und freigeben, anstatt sie in einer Moderations-Warteschlange festzuhalten.
Für Benutzer, die sich auf unserer Website registrieren, speichern wir zusätzlich die persönlichen Informationen, die sie in ihren Benutzerprofilen angeben. Alle Benutzer können jederzeit ihre persönlichen Informationen einsehen, verändern oder löschen (der Benutzername kann nicht verändert werden). Administratoren der Website können diese Informationen ebenfalls einsehen und verändern.
Welche Rechte du an deinen Daten hast
Textvorschlag: Wenn du ein Konto auf dieser Website besitzt oder Kommentare geschrieben hast, kannst du einen Export deiner personenbezogenen Daten bei uns anfordern, inklusive aller Daten, die du uns mitgeteilt hast. Darüber hinaus kannst du die Löschung aller personenbezogenen Daten, die wir von dir gespeichert haben, anfordern. Dies umfasst nicht die Daten, die wir aufgrund administrativer, rechtlicher oder sicherheitsrelevanter Notwendigkeiten aufbewahren müssen.
Wohin deine Daten gesendet werden
Textvorschlag: Besucher-Kommentare könnten von einem automatisierten Dienst zur Spam-Erkennung untersucht werden.
