By BEN NEARY
NMWF Conservation Director
The Permian Basin in far southeastern New Mexico and West Texas is the premier oil- and gas producing area in the nation. It’s also home to the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed in May as a federally endangered species.
What happens when these two realities collide?
Marilyn E. Wright, Ph.D., is the lead USFWS biologist for the lizard at the agency’s New Mexico Ecological Services Field Office. She will address the challenges facing the lizard at the New Mexico Wildlife Federation’s free “Wildlife Wednesday” event on June 12 in Albuquerque.
The Dunes Sagebrush Lizard grows to only about 2 inches long. Wright said they eat insects and insect larvae, including grasshoppers, ants, beetles, crickets and spiders.
The lizards live where stands of shinnery oak occur with sand dunes, Wright said. They rely on the shade of the oaks for heat regulation and to give them cover from predators, including roadrunners and shrikes.
The lizards often burrow into the sand. “That is their main adaptation to escape predators is to kind of swim under the sand,” Wright said. “They also tend to sleep buried in the sand. And they’ll use that for thermo-regulation.”
Female lizards also dig into the sand for nests and typically lay about five eggs per clutch, Wright said. “There are quite a few gaps in understanding of where the best places are for these nests, and how to find them,” she said. “That’s something we hope to learn more about.”
The rugged Permian Basin is one of the nation’s premier oil-producing areas.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, output from horizontal drilling in Lea and Eddy Counties in New Mexico accounted for 29 percent of all crude oil production in the Permian Basin in the first quarter of 2023, averaging 1.7 million barrels per day. Horizontal wells in Lea and Eddy counties accounted for 60 percent of total growth in the region in the first quarter of 2023, up from 44 percent in first-quarter 2022.
According to the federal agency, associated natural gas production in Lea and Eddy counties has nearly doubled since 2021. The two counties accounted for 28 percent of all natural gas production in the Permian Basin in the first quarter of 2023.
While the energy production provides necessary fuel for the nation and provides hefty revenues for state coffers, it also has brought with it an onslaught of disturbances to the land, including drilling and associated road-building and traffic. And all of those things have affected lizard populations.
According to the USFWS, the lizard occurs in about 4 percent of land in the 86,000 square-mile Permian Basin. Primary threats to the lizard include loss of habitat associated with oil and gas development, sand mining, and changing climate.
Wright said there are five distinct genetic lineages of the lizard: three in New Mexico and two in Texas.
“Of those five, the majority of all the areas are in decline,” Wright said of lizard populations. “I think there’s one small area in the northern part of the range where the lizard is actually doing pretty well. Unfortunately, with decline everywhere else around it, and that population being fragmented, it’s not the best of outlooks for the lizard.”
The USFWS has concluded it will designate critical habitat for the lizard, but hasn’t done so yet. The agency has a year from the date of the listing of the species to do that.
Around 100 ranchers and 100 oil and gas interests in both New Mexico and Texas already have enrolled in voluntary agreements to implement conservation practices that address specific threats to the lizard population. Those agreements give the landowners and companies the assurance that they will be able to continue to operate under the agreements with no additional requirements or restrictions even though the species is listed.
According to the USFWS, such voluntary enrollments cover nearly 85% of the dune sagebrush lizard’s range within New Mexico. Wright said landowners and companies have until June 20 to enter such conservation agreements.
After the enrollment period, Wright said the USFWS expects to develop conservation plans for the lizard. ”Basically we work with interested stakeholders to come up with a list of potential impacts their project may have and then we look to ideally avoid, if that’s a potential option,” she said. “And then wherever those impacts can’t be directly avoided, we’ll come up with conservation measures to minimize and mitigate the impacts.”
Many officials in the energy industry and their supporters have voiced alarm that listing the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard would stymie energy development in the area.
Asked what effect the listing will have, Wright responded, “That certainly depends on who you talk to. Our goal with Fish and Wildlife is to find collaborative ways where we ensure the conservation of the species while still finding a way forward for companies to continue with development.
“Certainly we’re sensitive to the fact that oil and gas development is a huge piece of the economy,” Wright said. “So we’re looking hopefully for as much collaboration with industry as we can get because the more they’re interested in coming to the table and working with us, the more power we have to kind of explore our options for conservation.”
Wright said she doesn’t expect there will be reductions to oil and gas production as a result of the lizard’s listing as an endangered species.
“No, to my knowledge,” Wright said. “That is not something that could come from Fish and Wildlife, necessarily, unless there were a permit that had been issued, the stipulations of which were not being met. Then we could revoke a permit. But we don’t really have the power to tell industry, ‘cease and desist.’”
Ultimately, Wright said she expects the listing will lead to better knowledge about how to reclaim lands so they can continue to support the lizard.
“One of the big issues with the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard, and why we’re in the situation we’re in, is of course the main threats are habitat loss and fragmentation,” Wright said. “And currently there’s no method that has proven effective for restoring that habitat. There are some options for reclamation where we can take out a caliche road, or reclaim a well pad. That does improve habitat for lizards. They’ll start to use it, move through it. However, without that dune structure, those blowouts that the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard really prefers, it’s not exactly a full return to a restored habitat.
“Right now, once habitat is damaged or degraded, in some ways it’s a total loss,” Wright said. “And what we’re really hoping to see is especially with the listing, that people start to spur the research interest into sand dune and shinnery oak restoration. Hopefully, in the future, if we have habitat that’s had some kind of disturbance, we can return it back to its natural condition post disturbance.”
Wright’s presentation will start at 5:30 p.m. at the Marble Brewery Northeast Heights Taproom, 9904 Montgomery Blvd., NE., in Albuquerque.