Attorney General Ken Paxton has secured a settlement that vacates the federal government’s listing of the dunes sagebrush lizard as an endangered species, ending a rule his office said threatened Texas’s oil and gas industry, the agency announced July 29.
According to the news release, Paxton sued the Biden administration in September 2024 over the listing, arguing it violated the Endangered Species Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. The office said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service relied on data that fell short of the law’s “best available” standard, disregarded its own internal listing policies, and made what the state called arbitrary assumptions about the oil and gas industry’s effect on the species.
Under the settlement reached with the Trump administration, the release said, the Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledged that it had failed to properly account for habitat restoration efforts and had produced an incomplete and potentially inaccurate picture of conservation work underway in Texas and New Mexico. The agency will now issue a new 12-month finding on whether a listing is warranted, with a decision expected within 24 months of the settlement’s entry, according to the office.
Paxton credited the change in federal administrations for the reversal. “The Biden Administration overlooked vital data when it unlawfully listed the dunes sagebrush lizard as endangered,” he said in the statement. “I am grateful that the Trump Administration has recognized this mistake and has committed to reevaluating the listing decision under the proper framework.”
He said vacating the rule spares the state economic harm during the review. “Texas, its people, and its industries should not have to suffer the effects of an illegal rule while the Fish and Wildlife Service further evaluates the status of the species,” Paxton said. The office said it would continue to monitor the review to ensure the lizard’s status is assessed “using sound science.”