Coordination Works | Dan Byfield | December 13, 2011

For the past seven months, American Stewards of Liberty has been fighting a real life giant.  A giant that has the ability to destroy an entire region which currently provides 20 percent of all the oil produced in America.  

It’s not a foreign army or a terrorist group, but a three-inch lizard known as the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard (DSL) supposedly only found in nine West Texas and southeastern New Mexico counties.    

As idiotic as it sounds, it is frightening to think that with the stroke of a pen, our United States federal government can destroy two industries – cattle and oil – that are providing critical resources to our nation and, at the same time, shut down tens of thousands of incredibly good-paying jobs all for a lizard.

The Dunes Sagebrush Lizard is found abundantly in what is called the Permian Basin region.  This region has produced oil and gas for over 100 years and now the radical environmental group known as the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) claim oil and gas production, pipelines and agribusiness activities are destroying and fragmenting the habitat of the DSL to the point that it must be protected by regulating man and industry.  

Several years ago, CBD filed a lawsuit demanding over 250 species be listed as endangered.  Instead of fighting the lawsuit, the Service settled the case and agreed to begin listing species immediately starting with the DSL in December, 2010.  

In May of 2011, the Permian Basin Petroleum Association (PBPA) contacted American Stewards of Liberty and asked if we would be willing to help fight the Service’s proposed listing.  Because the lizard’s listing could potentially affect over one million acres of private property, we agreed to help.  We started by educating, organizing and training multiple local government entities how to stand up to the federal government by utilizing our coordination strategy.  

It didn’t take the county judges long to figure out that we offered a very powerful tool through coordination and we began drafting letters for them to send to the Service requesting meetings.  

Under Section 1533 (b)(1)(A) of the Endangered Species Act (ESA), “The Secretary shall make determinations (to list species as endangered)…solely on the basis of the best scientific and commercial data available to him after conducting a review of the status of the species and after taking into account those efforts, if any, being made by any State…or any political subdivision of a State…to protect such species…”

Section 1531(2) of the ESA also states:  “It is further declared to be the policy of Congress that Federal agencies shall cooperate with State and local agencies to resolve water resource issues in concert with conservation of endangered species.”

It was under these two sections that we immediately began demanding the Service coordinate with eight of the nine counties, one city and one soil and water conservation district.  After a few months, we finally arranged meetings with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Lea County, NM and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Chaves County, NM.  We also, through U.S. Senator Cornyn (R-TX) were able to arrange a meeting in Midland, Texas with Dan Ashe, the newly confirmed Director of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Dr. Benjamin Tuggle, the Southwest Regional Director from Albuquerque, NM.

In all these meetings and our follow-up correspondence, we began inundating the Service and BLM with new scientific research, studies and reports that proved the science they were relying upon to make their determination to list was wholly deficient.  We were, in effect, legally noticing them that they were in violation of their own statute and needed to take into consideration all the new science we were providing.  

In their December, 2010 notice in the Federal Register, they cited specific documents as their definitive references that proved the lizard deserved to be listed.  All they did was take CBD’s mad-scientist’s research and incomplete studies and use them verbatim to claim the DSL was endangered by oil and gas development forcing them to promulgate regulations to control the industry.

Some of the documents cited by the Service included mere opinions, unsigned and undated one-page field notes, emails and out-dated, non-peer reviewed data.  All of which contained numerous inaccuracies and outright false conclusions that they claimed was the “best scientific data” available.

Fortunately, Congress is currently looking into this very issue of “best scientific data” because of all the bogus science environmentalists and our federal agencies are using to list species as endangered.  And, there are even recent court cases where judges are beginning to scold the federal government on science that doesn’t adhere to the Information Quality Act or the Service’s own IQA Guidelines for “quality, objectivity, integrity, and utility.”  In other words, they are using inaccurate science to push their agenda down the throats of millions of Americans and our resource-producing industries.

Fortunately, to counter their biased and false science, we were able to have the benefit of four Texas Tech scientists hired by the PBPA who performed true and accurate scientific studies totally refuting the CBD’s and federal government’s science and claims that the lizard was almost extinct and needed serious industry regulation.  

To date, we have presented six new studies and scientific reports directly to both Dan Ashe and Benjamin Tuggle in October and mailed certified copies to Secretary Ken Salazar in Washington, D.C.

In our public meeting with Dan Ashe, we got him to admit that his Agency would accept and consider any new scientific and commercial data prior to making his decision, however, to hold him to his promise, the counties, State of Texas and several oil and gas companies have drafted legal petitions to file in Federal Court should the Service decide to list and not take our new data into consideration.  

In fact, as of the writing of this story, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it was extending the deadline to make the determination to list for six months from December 5th, as allowed by the ESA, citing “insufficiency and accuracy of the science” as their reason to extend.  

That “disagreement regarding the sufficiency and accuracy” of the science is precisely because of the local government’s efforts through coordination that legally noticed the federal government of their bad science.  The information gathered through the two coordination meetings from the BLM and Service, as well as, the six new scientific studies by Texas Tech biologists, forced the Service to back off their December 14th deadline and extend it until June of 2012.

That alone can be considered a victory since no one gave us a chance to stop this listing.  Even our State Comptroller Susan Combs, who is now known as “Surrender Susan” has been working behind the scenes with the Service and other environmental groups to put together what she calls the Texas Conservation Plan (TCP).  

The TCP is nothing but a habitat conservation plan where the federal government will get a federal toehold in our state to regulate ranchers and the oil and gas industry.  Combs is seen as literally throwing in the towel while others of us are still fighting the good fight and to date are holding our own against the federal government with no help from Combs.  See the “Texas Czar” story for more on Susan Combs’ efforts to help the federal government.  

The amazing part about Coordination is our fortune of working with dedicated, local elected officials who all understand that listing the lizard is not about protecting the environment and an endangered species, but is nothing more than a political agenda by bureaucrats, radical environmentalists and the Administration to destroy two vital industries of our American economy.  

To accomplish part of that goal, over the past five or more years, our federal government has tried to shift our nation away from fossil fuels (oil and gas) to “renewable energy,” mainly wind and solar.  What has become painfully clear within the past month with the Solyndra scandal is, it’s not about moving our nation toward renewable energy, but paying off political supporters with federal tax dollars under the guise of government subsidies and debt subordination agreements.      

Coordination is a powerful tool that must be legislatively and legally protected.  Our detractors are learning that we are able and capable of standing up to their deceitful agenda, especially when the oil and gas industry has now “discovered” our strategy.  

The local people we’re helping will survive this lizard fight, but the list of species will continue until we finally take back Congress with rational and reasonable leaders who will stand up to these radical liberals who want to destroy our nation under the guise of saving our planet from imaginary man-made catastrophes.  

Until then, government will continue to grow unabated and we will have to slay more giants like the three-inch lizard to keep our nation from marching in lockstep toward socialism.  The lizard is just the first step in many that we have to win.  It’s that important of a fight.