Defenders' Experts
Flat Tailed Horned Lizard
Date Filed: 10/30/2003
Case Status: Victory
Tucson Herpetological Society v. Salazar
Over a decade of litigation challenging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s failure to list the flat-tailed horned lizard under the Endangered Species Act.
Case Background:
The 1990s
After years of languishing as an unprotected high priority candidate for listing, the flat-tailed horned lizard was finally proposed for listing by the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) on November 29, 1993. The biggest threat to the lizard is habitat loss, hundreds of thousands of acres of which have already been lost, from urban sprawl and other human activities in the Sonoran Desert. After two and a half years, Defenders sued the FWS for its failure to timely list the lizard.
On May 8, 1997, Defenders received an order from the U.S. District Court of Arizona requiring FWS to make a final decision on the status of the lizard. However, on July 15, 1997, FWS ultimately decided that listing of the lizard was not warranted based on an unsubstantiated assertion that threats to the lizard have been reduced and that an adequate candidate conservation agreement is in effect. Defenders challenged this decision and won a big victory when the Ninth Circuit remanded the listing back to FWS in order to consider whether the conservation agreement relieved the threats to the lizard and whether the lizard was “in danger of extinction throughout … a significant portion of its range.”
2000 to Present
On December 26, 2001, FWS again proposed threatened listing the lizard, only to withdraw the proposal two years later, essentially restating the basis for the 1997 withdrawal. Defenders and other parties challenged the withdrawal in October of 2003. In August of 2005 the district court found that the proposed rule violated the ESA by failing to evaluate the lizard’s lost habitat and whether that habitat was a significant portion of its range. The court again vacated the withdrawal.
FWS again reinstated the 1993 proposed listing rule on December 7, 2005, but withdrew it by June 28, 2006, concluding the lizard’s lost habitat was not a significant portion of its range. Defenders responded once again, challenging FWS’s withdrawal of the 1993 proposed listing rule on April 3, 2007. Plaintiffs challenged FWS’s conclusion as unsupported by the evidence. In 2007, we appealed a court ruling that upheld the FWS decision not to list the lizard.
Related Documents
Co-filers:
Tucson Herpetological Society, Center for Biological Diversity, Horned Lizard Conservation Society, Sierra Club, Wendy Hodges, Francis Allan Muth
Updates:
05/18/2009
Victory! As the Ninth Circuit affirms that the FWS must consider lost habitat when determining whether a species is in danger of extinction throughout a significant portion of its range, making critical comments about a legal memo from the Department of the Interior asserting otherwise. The court also found that the FWS’s conclusions that lizard populations were persisting in its current range were not supported by the evidence. The court reversed the FWS with directions to send the listing proposal back to FWS so that it can properly consider whether to list the lizard.
