Issues

Texas revamps conservation plans for dunes sagebrush lizard. This week, the Texas comptroller’s office announced it was seeking federal approval to reform a state conservation program to protect the dunes sagebrush lizard in the Permian Basin. The Texas Conservation Plan, developed in coordination with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, helped prevent a federal listing of the lizard in 2012.  However, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hager believes a new plan is needed to address recent concerns and issues, including the influx of sand miners in the region.

The new proposal defines ways companies can avoid lizard habitat and incentivizes industrial activities to focus on non-habitat areas. It also eliminates scientifically unsupported conservation options.

“It’s fair to say we’re very pleased that it strikes balance of protecting species while also allowing growth and development in the Permian Basin,” said Robert Gulley, who oversees endangered species conservation for the Texas comptroller’s office.

Governors speak out against federal land directive impacting sage-grouse. Governors from Nevada, Oregon and Utah recently expressed concern with a Trump administration directive that no longer requires off-site compensatory mitigation on most federal land as part of the Sage Grouse Initiative. The governors argue that it eliminates a technique that is imperative for saving the habitat of the greater sage-grouse.

“It took one of our tools out of the toolbox,” said John Swartout, an adviser to Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, who has been outspoken against the directive.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management, responsible for issuing the directive, said that the agency would work with the concerned governors on “adjusted plans” to mitigate state worries and continue protecting sage-grouse habitats.

In the News

Ken Salazar: Interior reorg ‘makes a lot of sense.’ E&E News, (Sub req’d). President Obama’s former Interior chief Ken Salazar supports the Trump administration’s plan to reorganize the agency he once helmed. The former senator and attorney general, now an energy lawyer in Colorado, also sees parallels in a reshuffling that Obama once floated. “Some of the reorganization to me makes a lot of sense because it was a lot of the same kind of things we were trying to push,” said Salazar from his office at the law firm WilmerHale in downtown Denver. “President Obama during the State of the Union talked about the need to reorganize, including bringing NOAA over from the Department of Commerce to the Department of Interior.”

ESA actions shrink as agencies mull overhaul. E&E News, (Sub req’d). The Fish and Wildlife Service last year designated fewer acres as critical habitat for vulnerable species and listed fewer plants and animals under the Endangered Species Act, a recent agency study shows. In 2017, the Trump administration’s first year, FWS classified 7,815 acres as critical habitat. That was significantly less than for any other year in the prior decade, the study shows. During the Obama administration’s final run around the sun, 2016, FWS designated more than 5.8 million acres as critical habitat for species protected under the ESA. The telling ESA data points are compiled in a report intended to inform a debate over the Fish and Wildlife Service’s and NOAA Fisheries’ proposed regulatory revisions. The numbers paint a picture, though one often lacking in finality about the likely impacts of the proposed changes.

House Republican bill would strip protection for mussels. E&E News, (Sub req’d). Dozens of freshwater mussel species nationwide would lose their Endangered Species Act protections under a sweeping new bill introduced by an Indiana lawmaker who’s been unhappy with the Fish and Wildlife Service. Authored by Republican Rep. Todd Rokita, H.R. 6668 is being pointedly marketed as the “Modifying Unaccountable Standards and Simplifying Endangered Lists Act.” In other words, it’s the “MUSSELS Act.” The bill needs only a few additional words to express the intent, which is that “any species of freshwater mussel shall not be treated as an endangered species or a threatened species” under the ESA. The mass delisting would take place within 30 days of the bill becoming law. As legislation, the all-encompassing measure introduced without any co-sponsors appears to be a long shot in a Congress where ESA bills struggle for traction.

Arguments linger over North Carolina’s red wolves. E&E News, (Sub req’d). A lively debate over revising the management of red wolves in North Carolina will continue roiling a while longer. After fielding at least 14,780 written opinions, many of them vehemently expressed, the Fish and Wildlife Service said today it will reopen a public comment period that officially expired at midnight on July 30. More fur will fly, without a doubt. “These beautiful animals need all the help they can get,” one anonymous individual wrote this month. “We don’t want to lose them, they are part of wildlife and history of the United States.” “Wolves have just as much right to life and land as we do,” another person wrote in July. “The proposal would allow private landowners to kill wolves that enter their property, but then that paints farmers and landowners as the bad guys who are killing an endangered species,” North Carolina Farm Bureau President Larry Wooten wrote July 31.