Judge reinstates attempt to protect flat-tailed horned lizard

The ruling follows the 9th Circuit's rejection of a Bush administration policy against listing the reptiles as threatened. The Department of Interior is expected to make a decision by next November.

A flat-tailed Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma mcalli) tries to hide in the dry mustard plants in the Coachella Valley Preserve. (Cameron Barrows)

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

Chalk one up for the flat-tailed horned lizard.

In the latest round in a 16-year legal battle to keep the squat lizard with dragon-like head spines safe from urban encroachment in its Southern California and Arizona haunts, a federal judge has reinstated a 1993 proposal to list the creature as a threatened species.

U.S. District Judge Neil V. Wake's ruling earlier this week in Arizona follows a recent U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals order that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reconsider its earlier decision to deny the lizard protection under the Endangered Species Act.

That decision rejected a Bush administration policy that environmentalists said favored development at the expense of the lizard and many plants and animals across the nation.

Since 1993, the agency has withdrawn three proposals to list the lizard on the grounds that it was hard to find and, therefore, difficult to classify as threatened. Each withdrawal was successfully challenged in court by conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club and the Horned Lizard Conservation Society.

In the meantime, the lizard's population has continued to decline in Arizona, California and Baja California largely because its habitats of gravel pans and dunes have been taken over by farming, housing, off-road vehicles, geothermal leases, gravel pits, golf courses, military exercises and border fences between the United States and Mexico.

The Department of the Interior is expected to make a final decision about the status of the flat-tailed horned lizard by November 2010.

"The lizard is certainly as deserving of federal protection today as it was 16 years ago," said attorney Bill Snape, who represented the Center for Biological Diversity in the matter. "Hopefully this is the final chapter in the lizard's long and tortured legal history."

The lizard -- 3 1/2 inches long and a voracious consumer of harvester ants -- once inhabited wide swaths of the Colorado and Sonoran deserts.

Listing the lizard as threatened could potentially affect the ongoing rush to build huge solar energy facilities across the desert flatlands of Southern California, said Allan Muth, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and director of the Boyd Deep Canyon Desert Research Center, south of Palm Desert.

"Amid all the applications being submitted to develop solar energy plants, it doesn't look like things will get any better for the flat-tailed horned lizard," Muth said. "If listing the lizard as a threatened species means people will take a little more time to think these things through, that's a good thing."

Anticipating a protection declaration, Stirling Energy Systems plans to mitigate the environmental impact of its proposed Solar II facility on 6,500 acres of flat-tailed horned lizard habitat near the Imperial County city of El Centro by purchasing prime lizard habitat elsewhere and donating it for conservation.

The proposed facility was recently renamed Tessera Solar's Imperial Valley Solar Two by Stirling to reflect the name of its sister company.

Environmental concerns delay solar projects in California desert

Several companies seek to build renewable-energy facilities on public land -- a goal backed by the White House -- but the slow permit process and fears over imperiled species have hindered construction.

UC Riverside scientist Jim Andre looks for a rare cactus in the Ivanpah Valley, near the site where BrightSource Energy has proposed building a solar-energy facility. (Mark Boster / September 15, 2009)

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from El Centro, Calif. - Across the desert flatlands of southeastern California, dozens of companies have flooded federal offices with applications to place solar mirrors on more than a million acres of public land.

But just as some of those projects appear headed toward fruition, environmental hurdles threaten to jeopardize efforts to further tap the region's renewable energy potential.

The development of solar-power facilities in the desert has been a top priority of the Obama administration as it seeks to ease the nation's dependence on fossil fuels and curb global warming. In addition, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has urged that the state meet one-third of its electricity needs from renewable sources by 2020.

Companies are racing to finalize their permits and break ground by the end of next year, which would qualify them to obtain some of the $15 billion in federal stimulus funds designated for renewable energy projects. At stake is the creation of 48,000 jobs and more than 5,300 megawatts of new energy, enough to power almost 1.8 million homes, according to federal land managers.

But the presence of sensitive habitat, rare plants and imperiled creatures such as desert tortoises, bighorn sheep and flat-tailed horned lizards threatens to stall or derail some of the projects closest to securing permits.

"There are significant environmental issues involved in the California gold rush-like scenario unfolding in the desert," said Peter Galvin, conservation director of the Center for Biological Diversity. "We are not going to just roll over when critical wild lands and last habitats of endangered species are in the mix."

Beyond the environmental issues is a bureaucratic one: State and federal regulatory agencies are hobbled by mandatory work furloughs and a lack of experience in processing utility-scale renewable energy project applications.

Removing that obstacle has become a top priority, with Schwarzenegger and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signing an agreement last week to help state and federal authorities expedite renewable energy development in the desert.

"The California process, our state process, is slow, the federal process is slow," Schwarzenegger said. "And this is why it is important that we go and create this kind of partnership so we can move through that and get rid of the red tape."

Salazar characterized the effort to facilitate a rapid and responsible move to large-scale renewables on public lands as a preeminent conservation issue of the 21st century. "If we fail, the rest of the world will move ahead of us," he said. "There is no reason for the U.S. to come in second on this agenda. And we won't."

One of the biggest projects is slated for 6,500 acres of public and private land just north of Interstate 8 near El Centro. Arizona-based Stirling Energy Systems said its Solar Two facility would create 700 jobs.

In a surprise setback, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in June to reconsider its decision not to list the flat-tailed horned lizard as an endangered species.

Stirling is investing heavily in strategies to minimize potential conflicts. Sean Gallagher, Stirling's vice president of marketing strategies and regulatory issues, said the company recently reduced the size of the project from 900 megawatts to 750 to avoid an area strewn with Native American artifacts.

The company also plans, with help from the Bureau of Land Management, to identify and buy 6,500 acres of flat-tailed horned lizard habitat elsewhere in Imperial County to help conserve the species. "That won't be an inconsiderable expense," Gallagher said.

In a worst-case scenario for the company and community boosters, the Fish and Wildlife Service could decide that the project threatens the lizard's existence and shut it down.

Peninsular bighorn sheep became an issue in March 2008 when company surveyors spotted two adult females and two lambs ambling down a dry wash in the heart of the Stirling site, miles from their usual mountain haunts.

Company officials and federal land managers have dismissed the incident as an aberration, speculating that the sheep were accidentally driven into the area by hunters or off-road vehicles. But some environmentalists are concerned that the federally endangered sheep may have followed a previously unknown migration corridor.

A coalition of environmental groups sued the Fish and Wildlife Service this month for slashing critical habitat designations for the sheep.

That worries Andy Horne, chief of natural resources development for Imperial County.

"We have the highest unemployment rate of any county in the state, so this [project] is very important to us," Horne said. "We've pegged our future on it."

As for the threatened reptiles, he mused, "If I were a flat-tailed horned lizard, I'd welcome the chance to get under the shade of one of those solar mirrors and take a little nap."

Even further along in the permitting process is BrightSource Energy, which plans to start construction in March on a 6-square-mile solar facility in eastern San Bernardino County's Ivanpah Valley.

BrightSource says the site is ideal, in part because it has been used for cattle grazing and off-road vehicles. It also has a major gas line and two major transmission lines.

Ivanpah is "a showcase of world-class technology and environmentally friendly development, and serves as a catalyst for economic growth," said company spokesman Keely Wachs.

But environmental groups say it would destroy what they see as a relatively pristine habitat that is home to a colony of about 30 threatened California desert tortoises. It is also studded with endangered cactuses, including varieties of cholla, a ground-hugging species also known as "horse tripper."

Of particular concern are BrightSource's plans to move the California desert tortoises. Environmentalists say the tortoises often die as a result of attempts to relocate them.

The Sierra Club has recommended that the company instead develop its facility in wide open, ecologically disturbed areas a few miles to the east, next to Interstate 15.

"We believe there is room for solar energy development in the California desert," said Joan Taylor, chairwoman of the Sierra Club's California/Nevada desert energy committee. "But there is no reason to put it in the wrong place."

BrightSource is "very concerned about the welfare of the desert tortoise," Wachs said, adding that the company has worked extensively with regulators and environmental groups to come up with a strategy that protects the species.

State and federal regulatory agencies are reviewing BrightSource's tortoise relocation plan, but one state official was critical of the project's location.

"BrightSource did not choose an ideal site. They are going to have to do some serious mitigation," said Dan Pellissier, Schwarzenegger's deputy secretary for energy and development.

He said the state energy commission and Bureau of Land Management "are working on a plan" that would require the company to buy three acres of habitat elsewhere for each acre developed. "It looks like we'll get them through" the permitting stages, he said, "and we'll end up with a responsible process that will keep us from ever allowing this to happen again."

Meanwhile, pressure to approve solar plants continues to mount in Bureau of Land Management offices throughout Southern California.

"Bullying us to step up the pace won't help," said Greg Miller, head of a new team created to speed up the bureau's permitting of renewable energy projects. "We're going to do this right; this land belongs to the American people."

Flat-tailed horned lizard is between a rock and extinction

OUT THERE
The rare reptile may have one more chance, thanks to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

A flat-tailed horned lizard trying to hide in the dry mustard plants in the Coachella Valley Preserve.

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Palm Springs -- As the sun rose over a wind-swept stretch of desert just east of Palm Springs, Cameron Barrows tramped over a series of dunes, identifying animal tracks in the sand -- kangaroo rat, shovel-nosed snake, cottontail, pocket mouse, sidewinder rattlesnake.

It took nearly two hours to find what he was looking for in the desolate patch framed by Interstate 10, two golf courses, retirement homes, country clubs and stores: fresh tracks of a flat-tailed horned lizard, one of the rarest and most legally contested reptiles in the United States.

"This is the last corner in the Coachella Valley that still has a population of these lizards," said Barrows, a research ecologist at UC Riverside and an expert on the secretive creature with a face that resembles the parched and thorny landscape it prefers. "Nearly all of its habitat in this region has been lost since 1970."

In the latest chapter in a long-running battle to keep the lizard safe from urban encroachment, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider its earlier decisions not to list it as an endangered species.

Environmentalists were elated by the ruling, which rejected a Bush administration policy they said favored development and corporate interests at the expense of the flat-tailed horned lizard and scores of other fragile plants and animals.

"This is the third time in 15 years since the lizard was first proposed for listing that a court has told the Fish and Wildlife Service to go back and review its refusal to protect it," Kara Gillon, senior staff attorney with Defenders of Wildlife, said in a statement. "We're hoping the third time is the charm. These lizards are running out of time."

The flat-tailed horned lizard is only the latest creature in recent weeks to be reconsidered for special federal protection. In response to lawsuits and petitions, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has also agreed to reconsider the Tehachapi slender salamander and critical habitat for the Sonoma County population of California tiger salamander.

Over the years, federal wildlife authorities insisted that the flat-tailed horned lizard was simply hard to find and, as a result, difficult to classify as threatened by extinction.

But biologists contend the lizard continues to decline throughout its historic range in Arizona, California and Baja California. In the Coachella Valley, it has been pushed into the tiny refuge by the growing desert metropolis that stretches from Palm Springs to the Salton Sea.

A century ago, the lizard was widespread and dynamic, moving east and west with changes in climate and the availability of sand in what was then a wide-open, treeless landscape. The first waves of significant habitat loss occurred in the 1930s, '40s and '50s as a result of a boom in agriculture.

Later, its historic haunts were fragmented and destroyed by roads, off-road vehicles, light industry, suburban tracts, condominiums and commercial centers. In the Palm Springs area -- the western edges of its range -- some populations were stranded by development and disappeared.

Today, the sole remnant of the population clings to existence in a pocket of dunes, creosote and salt bush within the Coachella Valley National Wildlife Refuge, where a new, unanticipated danger threatens its future. Power poles and exotic palm trees favored by landscapers have become perches used by small falcons to spot prey and launch hunting sorties.

As a result, "flat-tailed horned lizards are no longer found on the edges of their last habitat," Barrows said. "I've suggested that the surrounding palm trees be trimmed in the spring to keep small predatory birds from nesting in them."

Striding across a trio of dunes while scanning the ground for signs of the lizard, he said, "This animal is hard to find even in the best of times. So we count their tracks, which requires a lot of patience and training."

A full day of searching on a recent Saturday yielded six tracks.

The lizard -- 3 1/2 inches long and a voracious consumer of harvester ants -- has been the focus of court battles since it was first proposed for listing in 1993.

Now, in response to legal challenges brought by a coalition of environmental groups -- the Tucson Herpetological Society, Defenders of Wildlife, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Horned Lizard Conservation Society and the Sierra Club -- the 9th Circuit Court has ordered the agency to think again about the lizard's survival.

In the meantime, it shares the sun-scorched refuge with another unique and controversial representative of Coachella Valley desert life also threatened with extinction: the fringe-toed lizard, a small reptile with a patchwork of brick-like markings and feet shaped so it can "swim" through loose sand.

Judging from the number of tracks the lizards leave etched in the sand, there many more fringe-toed lizards.

"Will the flat-tailed horned lizard survive? We don't know," said Allan Muth, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and director of the Boyd Deep Canyon Desert Research Center, south of Palm Desert.

"Small, isolated populations tend to wink out. That's why there is so much importance attached to this case."