Lizard defenders file suit over species’ status
Bush administration, interior secretary sued for denying protection

By Benjamin Spillman
The Desert Sun
October 31, 2003


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Environmentalists in an ongoing battle with the government over the status of a desert lizard are taking the fight to court.

On Thursday a coalition of environmental groups announced they filed a lawsuit against the Bush administration and Interior Secretary Gale Norton that accuses the government of illegally denying the flat-tailed horned lizard protection as a threatened species.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Tucson.

The Sierra Club, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Tucson Herpetological Society, the Horned Lizard Conservation Society and Defenders of Wildlife are the groups challenging the government.

The lizard, which locally lives mostly in and around the Coachella Valley Preserve, has been the subject of a long running feud over its status.

The lawsuit announced Thursday follows a decision announced earlier this year not to consider the lizard a threatened species.

"Once again this Interior Department refuses to follow the law and protect wildlife," said Cynthia Wilkerson, California species associate for the group Defenders of Wildlife, one of the parties in the suit.

Allan Muth, director of the Palm Desert-based Boyd Deep Canyon Research Center, a University of California, Riverside, desert wildlife research center, said, the lizard has already been driven from much of its local habitat.

"That’s an undeniable indicator of decline for an animal that was once found from the vicinity of Snow Creek and throughout the sandy areas of the valley," Muth said.

The environmental groups contend agriculture and urban sprawl are wiping out the lizard species, which lives in Riverside, Imperial and San Diego county deserts and also in Arizona.

The lizard has been the subject of battles since 1997 when a proposal to list it was withdrawn by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The listing process was revived, however, in 2001 after a judge, responding to a lawsuit by environmentalists, ordered the government to reconsider.

Jane Hendron, spokeswoman for the Carlsbad branch of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the government is not poised to change its mind about the lizard.

"We made our final decision in January of this year," Hendron said. "The threats to the species were not such that it warranted listing under the Endangered Species Act."

She said there is already an approved plan to manage the lizard population in the desert.

The lizard -- distinguishable by a dark stripe that runs along its flat, spiny body -- is already excluded by development from much of its natural habitat in the Coachella Valley.

If the lizard is eventually listed, it could complicate efforts to build in remaining habitat.

Locally, builders could escape lizard problems if a valleywide plan to manage growth and species preservation is enacted.

The proposal, called the Coachella Valley Multiple Species Habitat Conservation Plan, is expected to be available to the public in November and could be enacted next fall.

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