Sometimes you just have to laugh 
In December, the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed adding the dunes sagebrush lizard — which lives only in New Mexico and West Texas and “faces immediate and significant threats due to oil and gas activities, and herbicide treatments” — to the Endangered Species List.
Last night, Andrew Napolitano railed against the proposed protection of the lizard on his Fox Business show, including it in what he deemed an “all-out vendetta against affordable oil.”
David Asman joined in pushing the conspiratorial claim while discussing the lizard on his Fox Business Show America’s Nightly Scoreboard, suggesting that the protecting the species could be part of “a ploy to hurt Texas oil production.”
While Varney, Asman, Napolitano, and Glenn Beck have all suggested that listing the dunes sagebrush lizard would require oil production in West Texas to shut down, Fish And Wildlife Service officials dispute this claim. Michelle Shaughnessy, the assistant regional director for ecological services in FWS’s Southwest district, told the Albuquerque Journal (accessed via Nexis) that these claims are “absolutely not true.” (source)
