The Dunes Sagebrush Lizard “is back and Biden is about to shut down the Permian Basin with this Obama era grift!”
Alert from reader Danelle: The Biden administration dropped a Friday-before-a-holiday-weekend regulatory bomb on the Texas Oil industry in the form of a proposed regulation listing the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard, which populates the Permean Basin, as “endangered,” casting aside an Obama-era conservation agreement that was working.
Reader Danelle sent me a link to an article at Hot Air about how the Biden administration dropped a Friday-before-a-holiday-weekend regulatory bomb on the Texas Oil industry in the form of a proposed regulation listing the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard as “endangered.” Since that lizard is common in the Permean Basin, it’s just another vehicle for the Biden administration to attack and undermine domestic energy production.
Read the Hot Air article and the sources it cites, about how unnecessary this all was because there has been a decade-long joint federal-oil industry conservation effort to protect the lizard, and it was working really well. But this isn’t about the lizard, it’s about attacking the domestic oil industry.
Danelle’s email to me was:
The Lizard is back and Biden is about to shut down the Permian Basin with this Obama era grift! Someone needs to call Governor Abbbot.
Back? You might be wondering why she would say it’s back.
If exploitation of the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard to attack the Texas oil industry sounds familiar, you may be a longtime Legal Insurrection reader. If Danelle sounds familiar, you may be a really longtime Legal Insurrection reader.
We first covered the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard on a tip from Danelle in May 2011. Yes, 2011. Feds Ignoring Greatest Threat to Dunes Sagebrush Lizard:
Sure, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service may be about to shut down oil production in a key region of Texas to protect the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard.
But the Feds are ignoring the threat from this environmental danger, the Texas Roadrunner, caught here eating a, um, Dunes Sagebrush Lizard:
(Thanks to reader Danelle for the photo taken by friend Dena on her porch in Winkler County, Texas (pop.7700) in the heart of the Permian Basin.)
The situation was not humorous, as much as we tried to make light of it.
Danelle continued to feed us info on the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard saga, Texas Roadrunners and oil industry eagerly await feds Dunes Sagebrush Lizard decision (June 2012). Danelle wrote us:
A day of decision is finally near for the West’s most-publicized reptile.
The Obama administration probably will announce Thursday if the dunes sagebrush lizard will be listed as an endangered species, said Tom Buckley, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Albuquerque.
An occupant of wind-swept dunes in oil country, the lizard exists only in four counties of southeastern New Mexico and four others in West Texas.
Buckley said today the announcement on the lizard’s status probably would be made in Washington. He expects either Interior Secretary Ken Salazar or Daniel Ashe, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, to make the finding public.
The ruling has huge economic and political ramifications covering the Permian Basin and Eastern New Mexico oil fields.
I can’t even begin to describe how great the economies are in West Texas and Eastern New Mexico. Grocery store clerks are earning upwards of $15 an hour with all the hours they want. Waitresses/Waiters are pulling in several hundred a day in tips. Cooks with experience who can start today are getting cash bonuses on the spot. Entry level roustabouts can easily get $29 an hour with guaranteed overtime and paid on the job training.
Long story short – Every person who wants a job has one and not just in the oil field.
Listing the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard sets in motions a chain of costly regulation and significant increases in property usage restrictions that will create an effective shutdown of the entire region.
So the question is will Salazar and Obama disappoint their leftist base, the EPA and the environmentalist agenda on this one? Or does he prove once and for all that he will do whatever it takes to disrupt the energy industry, kill jobs, and drive up energy prices? The Romney ads would write themselves.
The only safe play here is to punt the decision to January, but the opportunity to throw the government yoke onto one of the most historic and prolific energy fields in the US might be too much to resist.
Danelle then tipped us to the resolution being a conservation effort agreed upon to avoid haveing the Lizard put in the dangered list, Dunes Sagebrush Lizards fly – Feds deny endangered species status (June 2012). That’s the agreement that was working, that the Biden administration just tossed aside. Remember, that deal was struck by the Obama administration. The Biden administration is worse.
It’s interesting that if you run a blog long enough, what’s old is new.
Anyway, if Danelle were not such a reliable correspondent on the lizard and other things over the years, I may not have believed her when she told me about how A priest and a rabbi walked into a gun shop (December 2012):
Made a quick stop at my favorite firearms shop today just to see what was in stock. The store was fully staffed, with a help wanted sign on the door.
Every salesman, the owner, his wife and all 4 of his children were waiting on customers. The place was packed. Sure enough, they had a great price on a 9mm that I had been considering acquiring. As has been reported, the Federal Background Check system is severely stressed in the last few days. So, while you’re enjoying your complimentary sandwich and soda you get to do some people watching….. and I swear I can’t make this up….
A priest and a rabbi came into the shop to look at CCL Firearms. The owner of the store waited on them personally, determined exactly what their needs and comfort levels were and made a couple of great recommendations. Both made purchases. The owner comped both men free memberships to the local range as well as lessons.
Before I left, I gave my salesman a list of pistols and rifles that I would be interested in acquiring in the near future – He added it to their very long list of orders.
Times are becoming quite interesting.
The conservative blogosphere was a lot more fun back then, and the relationship with readers was so much closer. I miss those days. We all hated Obama, not each other.
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Comments
Are we trying to preserve the environment for people, or protect the environment from people? I was doing grounds work and gardening today.
Or, our clever, grifting overlords have developed a third option: feed their clients n oppress everyone else, using either of the others as cover.
I was doing grounds work and gardening today. My little stewarded landscape is way more diverse and productive than without the human participation — mostly native plants, and fauna that selects itself. Touched by a human, so bad, wrong, and evil, of course. Also, more pleasant and useful for me, at the same time. So, gotta put a stop to that.
Yeah I feel that, been doing some work around my pond(s) to improve their health and their ability to feed the fish, waterfowl and so on. It’s an old pond with decades of deferred maintenance; choked with weeds which puts too much CO2 into it and an algae bloom. The bloom is dying off which messes with the available O2 in the water which the fish and other things need to live, which the waterfowl eat as well as the Hawks and Blue Heron and occasional Cranes.
If I don’t intervene then the ponds basically die as a habitat. 2.5 acre of ponds and the area surrounding them is a little ecosystem which becomes barren without that intervention. The pond maintenance is this year’s big project for me.
Wel, I’m envious. I’m on a city plot.
Plenty of inexpensive land for sale in the Southeast. My particular slice was old farmland turned into timber land/planted pine and then 40 years ago a guy bought some of it and built a house, barn, outbuildings and expanded the spring fed pond. He had a few fruit trees and a small garden.
He moved back to where his kids were and I was able to buy it. Lots of small hobby farms available for purchase at a fair price if that’s the sort of place you want. Not sure about envy, I spent some back breaking days installing fence posts to expand the area for the mini orchard and garden and running fencing in the spring. The work on the pond is also kicking my butt. I have this stubborn streak about doing it by hand without mechanized equipment if it is possible.
Keeps me busy 4-5 hours a day outside doing things instead of sitting and bitching so that’s a positive. It’s very satisfying to see the results of the completed project or just the stages of the project. Best part is beginning to lose that last stubborn 10 lbs to get back to 180 lbs which was my HS graduation weight and my Army weight for 26 years. Retirement + no/little PT + learning to cook well the first 18 months of retirement= gained 35 lbs. Been fighting it off since.
Oh, that sounds just about perfect. Reminds me of the rural homestead converted to country resort where I spent half my kidhood.
Limitations from a couple medical conditions keep me at least semi-urban for now. I found a 1920s vintage working class neighborhood, with houses built as homesteads in the city. Excellent solution for me, given my mobility.
Two more “recovery” goals to pick off, then I have broader options, again.
Meanwhile, congratulations on your program, and progress. Very un sheeple-like. Admirable.
Biden is making a mistake messing with the people in west Texas. I have relations there and can assure you that the Texans will kill the lizard if efforts are made to halt oil production. And, if we ever have a civil war, that area is one where it might start.
This will not end well
Biden and the Dems want oil production shut down over the inane claims of global warming. They simply need an excuse and a patsy. This lizard is the excuse and the EPA is the patsy.
The EPA is a willing, knowing participant.
The very idea that oil and gas production is going to somehow make a lizard extinct is absurd. Have you ever driven through the Permian Basin? It is VAST. Yeah, there are a lot of rigs and (beaten down) roads out there, but it is yuuuge. Did I say VAST? There is plenty of room for oil and gas rigs to coexist with the lizards.
I remember as a kid, just beginning to pay real attention to politics, when the environmentalists were trying to prevent the Alaskan oil pipeline from being built. They said the pipeline would destroy the habitat of the caribou. Years later, when the pipeline was up and running, a bunch of photos came out of herds of caribou using the pipeline’s above-ground sections as shelter during storms.
These progressives are f*cking liars, and they need to be treated as such. Just tell them to STFU and go away. Ignore them. Texas should do the same.
When it comes to energy and fossil fuels always remember that there’s an ulterior motive for politician’s wanting to hamper or shut down domestic production. There’s very likely money or kickback’s to his supporters driving this move.
Yup. And in this case of our current POTUS* it seems he has been taking bribes directly from countries that have stated their desire to destroy us. There’s a word for that… I can’t quite put my finger on it… I also seem to remember there is a penalty outlined in the Constitution for such behavior….
Same with ANWR. The main drilling area would be mud flats and tundra. All those babbling brooks and nesting birds are either somewhere else or couldn’t care less. They live in an unreal bubble cushioned and sheltered from the real world.
The “they” want to be the masters of our fate and that has always been deadly.
The Serengeti Animal Sancturay in Tanzania is 5,300 sq miles. It is big enough to accomodate of herds of wildebeest, crocodile, honey badger and zebras. It’s also home to leopards, elephants, rhinos, buffalo and cheetahs, not to mention many species birds. It is 5,300 sq miles total area.
When asked why they couldn’t do something like that, you know, fence off a few square miles for a tiny lizard sanctuary, the Biden Administration said, “Hell no. The Sagebrush lizard requires 86,000 square miles.”
Biden is pulling out all the stops for endangered feces.
I’m a Texan and this is completely ridiculous. Everything the left believes or pretends to believe is a lie.
I’m convinced that the Biden Administration treatment of Texas is personal. The state won’t knuckle under and they keep voting for Republicans so they will be made to pay.
But this isn’t about the lizard, it’s about attacking the domestic oil industry.
THIS. Again and again, this.