Is the Obama Administration Protecting Lizards at the Expense of Jobs?

 

By Caroline May
DailyCaller.com

A little lizard is creating big concerns for Texas.

The Dunes Sagebrush Lizard, also known as the Sand Dune Lizard, inhabits the Permian Basin, one of America’s top energy producing regions. It contains more than 20 of the nation’s top 100 oil fields and, in the counties identified with lizard habitat, is keeping an estimated 27,000 jobs intact.

Despite the White House’s laser focus on jobs, the administration has its sights on putting these lizards on the Endangered Species List — a move which would severely limit oil production and kill area jobs in order to make the Permian Basin a protected habitat for the lizard.

“The wolf at the door is the lizard; we’re concerned listing it would shut down drilling activity for a minimum of two years and as many as five years while the service determines what habitat is needed for the lizard. That means no drilling, no seismic surveys, no roads built, no electric lines,” said Ben Shepperd, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association (PBPA).

According to the government, with the species on the verge of extinction, it needs to be protected. Various threats to the lizard include loss of habitat, “fragmentation and degradation as a result of oil and gas development and shinnery oak removal.”

If the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) adds the lizard to the Endangered Species list, a decision expected to be made in December, Shepherd noted it “would shut down activity and be devastating not only to Permian Basin economies but to the national economy. We are the one bright spot month after month; in our economic turnaround, the main driver is the oil and gas industry.”

Despite the apparent economic impact, the FWS is solely focused on the well being of the lizard.

“The law says we need to look at the science,” Michelle Shaughnessy, assistant regional director at the Fish and Wildlife Service, told ABC News.

While the lizard appears to be strained, there are many who believe the science is not settled.

The University of Texas Board of Regents commented to the FWS that the decision to list the lizard as endangered is “at best premature and currently unsupported in law and fact. The proposal is based on faulty science, inadequate data, and seriously erroneous assumptions.”