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Bureau of Land Management Plan for Imperiled Prairie-Chicken and Sand Dune Lizard Falls Short
“We fear this is recipe for extinction dressed up as a conservation plan,” noted Lauren McCain, WildEarth Guardians’ Deserts and Grasslands Program Director. “The plan allows the most significant threats to Lesser Prairie-Chickens and Sand Dune Lizards in major portions of these animals’ rapidly disappearing habitat.”
The Bureau’s plan continues to allow oil and gas development, off-highway vehicle use, toxic herbicide application, and livestock grazing. The few restrictions imposed by the Plan are woefully inadequate to protect the prairie-chicken and lizard.
For example, the Bureau of Land Management’s plan opens over 800,000 acres to new oil and gas leasing-over 70% of existing Lesser Prairie-Chicken and Sand Dune Lizard habitat in the four-county plan area. The Bureau will allow oil and gas development on close to 5,000 acres where these animals are known to exist. Though the Bureau issues stipulations to mitigate impacts from oil and gas development on special statues species, these are often waived at the request of operators. The Bureau of Land Management has waived around 500 stipulations designed to protect Lesser Prairie-Chickens and Sand Dune Lizards just in the last few years.
Instead of preventing and minimizing known threats to wildlife, the Plan relies on promises of reclamation as a basis for minimizing the environmental impact of the proposed action. However, reclamation is very difficult in arid and semi-arid lands, such as those existing in the Plan area. In addition, the BLM’s track record on enforcing wellpad, pipeline, road, and other reclamation has been marginal.
“The Bureau of Land Management’s new plan to ‘conserve’ these animals reveals that the only way to protect the Lesser Prairie-Chicken and Sand Dune Lizard is for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to step in and list them under the Endangered Species Act,” added McCain.
The Sand Dune Lizard is teetering on the brink of extinction. Scientists are concerned it may never recover. In New Mexico, the animal’s range includes small parts of Chaves, Eddy, Lea, and Roosevelt Counties within shinnery oak habitat that is shrinking due to continued human threats.
The Lesser Prairie-Chicken has experienced dramatic population declines in major areas of its small range in New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado. The populations in Colorado and Kansas-historic strongholds for the prairie-chicken-dropped by 50% just in the last year.
The Bureau’s Resource Management Plan Amendment fails to protect other species statues species as well, including the Black-tailed Prairie Dog, Swift Fox, Mountain Plover, Burrowing Owl, Bell’s Vireo, Gray Vireo, Ferruginous Hawk, Loggerhead Shrike, Texas Horned Lizard, Northern Aplomado Falcon, and Bald Eagle.