By Jonathan Stempel<\/p>\n
June 4 (Reuters) – The Trump administration agreed to strip endangered species protection from a lizard whose habitat overlapped the largest oil-producing region in the United \u200cStates, settling a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Fish and \u200cWildlife Service designated the dunes sagebrush lizard as endangered in May 2024, after concluding that oil and gas development \u200bin the Permian Basin had made the loss of its habitat “effectively permanent.”<\/p>\n
But the service now believes it made a “serious and fundamental” error by improperly assuming that habitat restoration could not occur, and by discounting experimental efforts that “showed promise,” the U.S. Department of Justice said in a Wednesday court filing accompanying \u200cthe settlement.<\/p>\n
That error “led to an \u2060incomplete and potentially inaccurate assessment of the potential and ongoing conservation efforts in New Mexico and Texas,” the Justice Department said.<\/p>\n
The settlement requires approval by a \u2060federal judge in Midland, Texas.<\/p>\n
It is the latest environmental rollback under President Donald Trump, a Republican who has pushed to dismantle regulations in a bid to reduce costs for industry and boost domestic energy \u200bproduction. Critics \u200bsay his efforts weaken protections for air, water \u200band public health.<\/p>\n
Paxton’s office did not immediately \u200crespond to requests for comment on Thursday.<\/p>\n
PAXTON CALLED BIDEN-ERA RULE POLITICALLY MOTIVATED<\/p>\n
The September 2024 lawsuit sought to undo the final rule protecting the lizard, issued during then-Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.<\/p>\n
Paxton said the rule was politically motivated, could undermine energy production, and threatened private landowners’ ability to conduct business.<\/p>\n
The Fish and Wildlife Service, part of the U.S. Department of the Interior, declared the \u200clizard endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act, which \u200brestricts development in habitats deemed critical to a species’ survival.<\/p>\n
Under \u200bthe settlement, the agency plans further \u200breview and to decide within two years whether to reclassify the lizard \u200cas endangered or threatened.<\/p>\n
It did not admit wrongdoing \u200bbeyond acknowledging error regarding \u200bhabitat restoration.<\/p>\n
Paxton, a Republican, is seeking a U.S. Senate seat, and is a strong Trump supporter.<\/p>\n
The dunes sagebrush lizard’s range spans 1.25 million acres (1,953 square miles), according to the \u200bFish and Wildlife Service.<\/p>\n
Texas accounted \u200cfor 43% of the nation’s crude oil production and 28% of its natural gas \u200bgross withdrawals in 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Jonathan \u200bStempel in New York; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jonathan Stempel June 4 (Reuters) – The Trump administration agreed to strip endangered species protection from a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[145,7809,115481,115480,1967,115482,115479,27,4479,29,28,30915],"class_list":["post-322869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-donald-trump","tag-endangered-species","tag-fish-and-wildlife-service","tag-habitat-restoration","tag-ken-paxton","tag-oil-and-gas-development","tag-sagebrush-lizard","tag-texas","tag-texas-attorney-general","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-u-s-department-of-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}