DesertBlog

Good news for the flat-tailed horned lizard

Credit: Jim Rorabaugh/USFWS

Some good news from our friends at the Center for Biological Diversity:

In response to a lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, Tucson Herpetological Society, Defenders of Wildlife, and others, a federal district court in Arizona ruled late Tuesday that the flat-tailed horned lizard once again is a proposed threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

The district court’s reinstatement of the proposed listing rule follows a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in May 2009 that overturned an Interior Department decision to deny protection to the species.

Since the vanishing lizard was first proposed for listing in 1993, the proposal had been withdrawn three times, with conservation groups successfully challenging each withdrawal in court. Meanwhile, the species’ habitat has fallen prey to additional destruction.

There are a few versions of this news floating around that inadvertently exaggerate the good news aspect, so here’s a little bit of DPC clarification. The lizard (known formally to herpetologists as Phrynosoma mcallii) hasn’t won legal status as a Threatened species. That may yet come. What it has gained is its old seat in the waiting room.

In order for a species to be listed as Endangered or Threatened, it must first be proposed for listing. A species can be proposed for listing due to the relevant federal agencies taking the initiative through their candidate assessment programs, or as a result of petition from concerned citizens and organizations. Either way, field staff for the agency involved — National Marine Fisheries Service staff for species in their bailiwick, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service for everything else — review the available science and write a draft proposal. This gets forwarded to DC, where national staff make changes and amendments and then publish the final proposal in the Federal Register.

That’s the status the horned lizard has regained: formally proposed. The species must still await a public comment period and final agency decision. It does not yet enjoy the protection Threatened status would afford it. But it is a step closer.

It’s sobering to note that while most of us have gotten used to the Bush administration stonewalling on endangered species protection, the Interior Department has been tossing back the proposal to list the flat-tailed horned lizard ever since 1993, the first year of the Clinton administration. Ironically, the reason for the refusal to act is apparently that the lizard is just too hard to find, and getting harder with the passage of time. A sensible person might conclude that the species is therefore getting closer to the brink of extinction’s abyss. Not so, says the Interior Department: because we can’t find the things, we therefore have no information on their numbers and thus insufficient data to determine whether they’re rare.

You can’t make up stuff like this.