endangered species

Officials with the Interior Department want to make the protections for the Greater Sage Grouse even stronger with a plan that would eliminate loopholes that allowed development in areas considered crucial to the bird’s long-term survival.

The lawsuit claims federal regulators have undermined the Texas oil and gas industry by misusing environmental law, negatively affecting drilling and production.

Federal wildlife officials recently declared a rare lizard an endangered species, citing future energy development, sand mining, and climate change as the biggest threats to its survival.

The strategy is part of larger interagency effort to promote recovery of the North Atlantic right whale while responsibly developing offshore wind.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service said the dunes sagebrush lizard, which lives in and around the Permian Basin region, should be listed as an endangered species.

The new listing aims to prevent further loss of habitat for the flamboyant, stocky birds, which have drastically dwindled in population.

The groups and states want the Ninth Circuit to restore rules that changed how agencies classify endangered or threatened species and their habitats under the Endangered Species Act.

The Trump administration has shelved plans to offer nearly 350,000 acres for oil and gas leasing in Wyoming, according to documents seen by Reuters, citing protections for a threatened Western bird.

A US judge in Montana has thrown out a Trump administration directive that weakened an Obama-era policy aimed at protecting the threatened bird, invalidating hundreds of oil and gas leases on federal land in Montana and Wyoming.

Canada’s wood bison, who live in northern Alberta near the proposed site of Teck Resources’s Frontier oil sands project, face “imminent threats” to their recovery, a report from the country’s environment department said.