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The Permian Basin harbors three of the United States' most endangered animals: lesser prairie chickens, dunes sagebrush lizards, and freshwater mussels called Texas hornshells. Decades of relentless oil drilling — plus livestock grazing, mining and pollution — have pushed all three to the brink of extinction.
A large sedimentary basin in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico, the Permian Basin is also the highest-producing oil field in the country.
Without safeguards for their home, these species will disappear.
Dunes sagebrush lizards, native to a small part of the Permian Basin, have lost more than 95% of their habitat to oil and gas development and sand mining for fracking. Lesser prairie chickens also now occupy a fraction of their historic range — even the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service admits that losing just a small amount of suitable habitat could send the species into a death spiral. And Texas hornshells are down to only five known populations in the United States.
After decades of advocacy by the Center for Biological Diversity and allies, the Fish and Wildlife Service has finally protected all three species under the Endangered Species Act. But the agency still hasn't given them critical habitat — even though the Act requires it to.
Lesser prairie chickens, dunes sagebrush lizards, and Texas hornshell mussels urgently need federal officials to protect the places these species need to survive and recover.
Tell the federal government to enact the strongest possible critical habitat designations now.