The lizard won’t get listed after all.
After nearly two years of back and forth among environmentalists, oil and gas industry supporters and politicians on Capitol Hill, the US Fish and Wildlife Service ruled on Wednesday (June 13) that the dunes sagebrush lizard will not be placed on the federal government’s endangered species list.
In a news [...]

As firefighters battle the Little Bear Fire that has destroyed at least 36 structures in the Ruidoso area, Congressman Steve Pearce (R-New Mexico) and an official with the US Forest Service had a heated exchange over the agency’s handling of the wildfire that as of Sunday afternoon had charred more than 26,000 acres in the [...]

In little more than a month, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has to decide whether to place the dunes sagebrush lizard on the federal government’s Endangered Species List.
It’s a decision that is sure to inflame oil and gas industry supporters in New Mexico and Texas if the lizard is approved while angering environmentalists if [...]

A Democratic state representative says he’s planning to introduce a resolution in the upcoming legislative session to protest the Environmental Protection Agency’s rejection of a plan adopted by the state to clean up the air surrounding the coal-fired San Juan power plant outside Farmington. Instead, the EPA has insisted on a tougher, more expensive plan [...]

Gov. Susana Martinez was the subject of a New York Times article this week that highlighted her differences with former Gov. Bill Richardson:
“We have our own agenda,” Ms. Martinez, 52, said in an interview in Mr. Richardson’s old office, while acknowledging that “some of it has been to undo his.” [...]

Back on June 2, the state’s Environmental Improvement Board (EIB) unanimously passed a less costly plan aimed at reducing regional haze from the coal-fired San Juan power plant outside Farmington.
But on Friday (Aug. 5), the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington rejected the plan, insisting the plant be retrofitted with cleaner technololgy. The state’s largest [...]

This year has proved to be the worst season ever for wildfires in New Mexico and now the rhetoric between environmentalists and critics of recent forest management policies is blazing as well, with charges that eco-friendly policies have actually made wildfires more devastating while environmental groups counter that such charges are baseless.
Last week at a [...]

Here are a couple more dispatches on the “Lizard War” we’ve been blogging about.
First, the Houston Chronicle ran a story in its Sunday edition on the debate raging in west Texas and southeast New Mexico about whether the dunes sage brush lizard should be placed on the federal government’s endangered species list:

“It’s reptile dysfunction,” said [...]

At little more than three inches in length, the dunes sagebrush lizard may be hard to spot and even harder to catch.
But it’s not hard to find find vast disagreement over its impact on the oil and gas industry in southeast New Mexico as the rhetoric between environmental groups and Rep. Steve Pearce intensify.
On Wednesday [...]

As the US Fish and Wildlife Service prepares for a public meeting in Roswell Thursday evening (April 28) over whether or not to grant the dunes sagebrush lizard protection under the Endangered Species Act, all of the Democrats in the New Mexico congressional delegation have refused to comment about what their stance is regarding the [...]