Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced that his office is suing the US Department of the Interior, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and Biden administration officials for declaring a rare lizard endangered earlier this year.
The dunes sagebrush lizard burrows in the sand dunes in the Mescalero-Monahans ecosystem 30 miles west of Odessa—the same West Texas land that supports the state’s biggest oil and gas fields.
For 4 decades, biologists warned federal regulators about the existential threat that oil and gas exploration and development poses for the reptile’s habitat, while industry representatives fought against the designation, saying it would scare off companies interested in drilling in the nation’s most lucrative oil and natural gas basin.
In May, federal regulators ruled that the industry’s expansion posed a grave threat to the lizard’s survival when listing it as endangered.
Now, the state’s top lawyer is suing.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s unlawful misuse of environmental law is a backdoor attempt to undermine Texas’s oil and gas industries which help keep the lights on for America,” Paxton said. “I warned that we would sue over this illegal move, and now we will see them in court.”