Snakes, salamanders, and different slimy specimens peer sightlessly out from rows of glass jars in a College Station archive. As Lee Fitzgerald walks previous roughly 115,000 preserved amphibians and reptiles that belong to Texas A&M University’s Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections, he factors out a boa constrictor from California, a goliath frog from Cameroon, and a thorny satan from Australia. In entrance of 1 metallic shelf, he stops earlier than a hefty container piled with about thirty lizard corpses in various shades of brown and grey. Fitzgerald picks up the jar and holds it up proudly, as one may when introducing a beloved pet.
He and fellow herpetologists collected these two-inch-long lizards throughout greater than three many years of analysis in West Texas and New Mexico, the place the creatures make their properties in dunes of coarse sand. Since Fitzgerald began finding out the dunes sagebrush lizard within the Nineties, the reptile has suffered important inhabitants loss and habitat destruction, largely from street building that comes with oil, fuel, and sand extraction. According to a 2023 evaluation by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the dunes sagebrush lizard is now “functionally extinct” throughout 47 p.c of its vary. Only in a small patch of the Permian Basin, in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico, does the critter endure.
Now the species awaits a fateful ruling because the company deliberates over whether or not to record it as endangered. That designation would prohibit land use throughout the lizard’s habitat, probably defending it from extinction. But its habitat consists of sand and brush mendacity above beneficial deposits of oil and pure fuel, placing the tiny creature on the heart of a political and financial battle that has been intensifying since 2002. That’s when the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental nonprofit based mostly in Tucson, first petitioned for the lizard to be listed as endangered. The oil and fuel trade has efficiently lobbied towards the designation, resulting in state-run, voluntary conservation agreements as a substitute of long-term, federal necessities.
Toeing the road between advocacy and scientific inquiry, Fitzgerald has drawn on many years of analysis to push for conservation within the West Texas desert. He has met with stakeholder organizations to elucidate the lizards’ plight and watched as conservation took a again seat to jobs and income within the oil and fuel trade. His hopes for everlasting safety of the lizard have repeatedly been trampled, however he isn’t backing down. “Is the lizard gonna make it?” he requested. “I’m sure not giving up.”
Fitzgerald’s love for all issues small and scaly began early. When he was a five-year-old rising up within the Houston suburb of Pasadena within the Sixties, his father died of a coronary heart attack at age 41. Then a kindergartener, Fitzgerald took consolation in a three-toed field turtle that he noticed whereas walking across the neighborhood along with his mom. He took the turtle home, the place his uncle made a pen for it. That encounter was the start of a life spent marveling at reptiles and amphibians. “I just remember everything about that turtle,” Fitzgerald stated. After incomes his bachelor’s diploma in biology at Stephen F. Austin State University, Fitzgerald studied iguanas in El Salvador till the civil conflict in that nation heated up and he was evacuated to Paraguay. There he labored with biologists to ascertain the nation’s first National Museum of Natural History. “He still carries the spirit of a little boy—the adventurer, the kid who wants to go to the backyard or in the back creek and look for salamanders,” stated Amanda Stronza, an anthropologist and A&M colleague. “He has that curiosity and real love for what he does.”
Fitzgerald’s journey with the dunes sagebrush lizard started in 1993, when fellow herpetologist Charlie Painter, of the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, requested if he needed to assist work out the place precisely this species lived. Fitzgerald, Painter, and two assistants drove and camped throughout the Mescalero Sands in New Mexico and the Monahans Sandhills in West Texas, counting lizards. They typically slept on the bottom and cooked over an open hearth. To catch specimens, they often sling-shot rubber bands on the lizards to stun them, a course of Fitzgerald referred to as the “Rubber Band Lizard Collecting Technique.” They would additionally lasso the critters with string, in quintessential Texas vogue.
The lizards had been pleasant to watch: they appeared to swim by means of the sand and would dive into its depths. Watching them scurry by means of the sparse vegetation, Fitzgerald admired how deftly the reptiles had tailored to their desert home. But he additionally realized that they had been in hassle. The dunes sagebrush lizard is what’s often called a microendemic species, or one with very particular habitat necessities met solely in a comparatively small space. It lives solely in particular patches unfold throughout West Texas and New Mexico, the place shinnery oak bushes and coarse sands create small dunes with the proper situations for this choosy reptile to build its burrows and dine on ants, beetles, and different bugs.
Oil fields, and the maze of roads required to service them, fragment the panorama this species calls home. When sand dunes are bisected by a street, the lizard inhabitants in that space plummets. Shinnery oak roots anchor the sand dunes, and the tree’s foliage shelters bugs. But the leaves are poisonous to cattle, so ranchers typically attack the bushes with herbicides.
Environmentalists have been pushing for the lizard to be listed as endangered since not less than 2002, when the Center for Biological Diversity filed a petition. Eight years later, in 2010, the Fish and Wildlife Service formally proposed including the lizard to the record.
The reptile’s West Texas vary lies about thirty miles west of Odessa, in a crescent that measures about fifteen miles extensive and seventy miles lengthy, working roughly from Andrews south to Monahans. All of that vary lies throughout the Permian Basin, which accounts for almost 40 p.c of all oil manufacturing within the nation, and almost 15 p.c of its pure fuel manufacturing, in line with the Railroad Commission of Texas, which is meant to control the petroleum trade. Listing the dunes sagebrush lizard as endangered may considerably restrict oil and fuel exploration and manufacturing within the reptile’s habitat, so opposition was fierce.
Sean Hannity lamented on Fox News in 2011 that this “pesky little critter” may endanger the oil trade. The similar yr, U.S. senator John Cornyn proposed a invoice that may’ve blocked the Fish and Wildlife Service from itemizing the lizard as endangered, however the measure didn’t cross. In 2012, then-President Barack Obama made a cease within the Permian Basin to speak concerning the significance of home oil manufacturing. The pump jack he selected as a backdrop for his speech occurred to be situated atop a lizard analysis web site in New Mexico. “He didn’t mention the lizard, but the subtext was, ‘This is not going to stop production,’ ” Fitzgerald stated.
The subsequent yr, the Fish and Wildlife Service dropped its proposal for the lizard to be listed as endangered, a choice cheered by the oil and fuel trade. The company as a substitute accepted voluntary conservation agreements with homeowners of land the place the lizards reside in New Mexico and Texas. The states create provisions for these agreements by means of a conservation plan. Texas’s plan permits oil and fuel growth and ranching within the lizards’ habitat, however taking part landowners are solely allowed to collectively destroy about 1,750 acres of lizard habitat. Texas’s conservation plan has gone by means of quite a few revisions over the years, and membership dropped sharply in 2020, in line with a report by present permit-holder American Conservation Foundation, a Texas-based nonprofit. As of March 2024, solely eight landowners had been a part of the conservation plan, in line with the Fish and Wildlife Service.
In New Mexico, conservation measures are extra stringent and require that oil and fuel services and roads keep out of the habitat completely. The Fish and Wildlife Service’s petition notes that the New Mexico plans are simpler than Texas’s, which the company’s scientists don’t count on to “have a measurable effect in protecting the dunes sagebrush lizard or its habitat.” Fitzgerald referred to as the plans “toothless” and “an example of the state prioritizing oil and gas over conservation.”
Meanwhile, Fitzgerald has watched the lizard inhabitants shrink together with its habitat. In a number of sand dune “neighborhoods,” the animal has disappeared completely, his analysis exhibits. Only about 6 p.c of the species’ habitat vary is in good situation to help a sturdy inhabitants, in line with an estimate from the New Mexico Ecological Services Office. Another 47 p.c is in average situation and may have the ability to help populations, however is in peril of being additional disturbed to the purpose that the creatures can not survive there.“Policy makers that are against conserving the lizard think that this small lizard is not worth causing trouble for the oil and gas industry,” Fitzgerald stated.
Conservationists have continued to push for protections. In 2018, the Center for Biological Diversity and Defenders of Wildlife once more petitioned for the lizard to be listed as endangered. The measures that they proposed would prohibit actions that may harm the lizards’ habitat, together with destruction of the shinnery oak and sand dunes and using herbicides. Land customers would wish a allow from the Fish and Wildlife Service to have interaction in any actions that may trigger habitat destruction.
The federal company introduced in June 2023 that it was looking for public enter on the proposal. The remark interval closed in October, and a ruling may come at any time. Fitzgerald’s hopes aren’t excessive. He and others have been making the identical arguments for many years to no avail.
What’s most irritating, he says, is how straightforward it will be to avoid wasting the lizard. While the species’ habitat lies above petroleum deposits, the lizards reside in lower than 2 p.c of the Permian Basin and fewer than 5 p.c of the six Texas counties the place it exists. Fitzgerald stated it will not be troublesome to keep away from building roads or mines immediately on the sand dunes. Directional drilling, a typical method that creates bores at a slant as a substitute of vertically, is an alternative choice that he stated may keep away from disrupting the dunes. But these protecting measures have largely not been carried out in Texas. Some oil rigs and roads permit 100 ft of house between building and sand dunes, however Fitzgerald stated even this disturbs the delicate dune construction. “It would be very easy to protect the habitat and still get the oil,” he stated, “but they refuse to agree with that.”
Relocating lizards can also be a potential conservation technique. The animals must be moved to a shinnery oak habitat that is protected against human disruption, however in line with a 2022 report by Fitzgerald and colleagues, this may very well be one technique to reestablish the inhabitants outdoors of fragmented areas. Conservationists have had some success making use of this tactic for different species, together with Texas’s native bobwhite quail.
Critics of the conservation plans argue that avoiding the habitat would cost billions of {dollars}. One of essentially the most outspoken teams is the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, made up of firms with pursuits within the Permian Basin. (Texas Monthly’s chairman can also be chairman of the managing associate of Enterprise Products Partners L.P., a midstream power firm with pursuits that embrace pipelines and storage services. Enterprise Products Partners is just not a member of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, nor has it taken a position on protections for the dunes sagebrush lizard.)
Ben Shepperd, the affiliation’s president, stated the dunes sagebrush lizard petition originated from environmental teams which have “a clear goal of ridding Texas, America and, frankly, the planet of all hydrocarbon exploration and production. . . . We certainly feel like we’re under attack from environmental groups, and they have a voice in this administration,” he stated.
Shepperd stated he respects Fitzgerald and his analysis; the affiliation invited Fitzgerald to its Midland headquarters, the place Fitzgerald gave displays about lizard conservation. The Permian Basin Petroleum Association encourages its members to study concerning the conservation packages, Shepperd stated, and “consider whether or not those plans make sense for them and how to make them work.” But he worries not solely that an “endangered” designation for the lizard would create strict pointers which are costly to adjust to, but additionally that potential buyers can be scared off by the uncertainty of future conservation, “making people’s investments useless, worthless overnight.” He pointed to the work that his group has accomplished to assist the endangered prairie hen inhabitants as proof that it cares about Texas’s vulnerable wildlife.
Decades of analysis has proven that the lizard inhabitants is declining, to the purpose that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service discovered that the species is in peril of extinction all through its vary. Still, opponents of elevated protections for the lizard deny that it faces any hazard in any respect. The Texas Public Policy Foundation, a right-wing advocacy group funded largely by oil and fuel pursuits, claimed in a 2023 press launch that there “is no scientific evidence demonstrating that the lizard is or soon will be endangered, nor is there evidence that the lizard’s habitat is threatened by oil and gas production or frac sand mining.”
Rob Henneke, the manager director and basic counsel for the Center for the American Future on the Texas Public Policy Foundation, stated additional protections are pointless. “It’s these outside leftist environmental groups that have been pushing for decades to abuse the Endangered Species Act as a way of gaining federal regulatory control over the Permian Basin,” he stated.
Other naysayers embrace some working in the identical college system as Fitzgerald. Two million acres of the oil-rich Permian Basin are owned and leased by Texas A&M and the University of Texas. University Lands, a joint A&M–UT workplace, leases out the land to grease and fuel firms for billions of {dollars} every year, and the earnings goes to the Permanent University Fund, one of many nation’s largest college endowments. According to the company’s annual report, 2022 was essentially the most profitable yr but, with $2.22 billion in income.
An financial evaluation of University Lands in 2017 devoted a number of pages to the influence that lizard conservation may have on the Permanent University Fund. The report, which begins with a title web page declaring “And Fountains of Unstinted Wealth Will Gush Forth,” claims that restrictions in growth to guard the lizard would cost “$2.0 billion in gross product and about 18,800 person-years of employment” from 2017 to 2040. The report additionally contended that the lizards’ inhabitants is just not falling and conservation is just not wanted. University Lands didn’t reply to interview requests from Texas Monthly.
“Their knee-jerk reaction is it is a costly inconvenience that messes with their bottom line, and it’s bullshit they would have to do that for a little lizard,” Fitzgerald stated of coverage makers who oppose new measures to guard the reptile. While his analysis predicts that extinction could also be nigh, he additionally believes there may be time left to avoid wasting the species. The lizard is intrinsically related to its ecosystem; it eats vegetation and bugs and is prey for bigger creatures, together with charismatic birds of prey. While this species’ extinction alone wouldn’t imply the collapse of that system, Fitzgerald compares it to eradicating rivets from an airplane: taking out a number of won’t trigger disaster, but when sufficient components are misplaced, the aircraft falls aside. “The bigger picture,” he stated, “is how much loss of the environment and species are we willing to tolerate?”
