Range: Southeast New Mexico and adjacent parts of Texas.
Habitat Type: Sand dunes within shinnery oak forests.
Diet: Arthropods, including ants, beetles, crickets, grasshoppers, and spiders.
Estimated Population: Unknown

The Sand Dune Lizard, sometimes called the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard, is highly tied to its habitat and is seldom found more than six feet from a shinnery oak plant.  Herbicidal control of shinnery oak - for the benefit of ranching - has caused lizard declines of 70 to 94 percent.

This lizard is also highly sensitive to oil and gas disturbance and has the misfortune to overlay one of the most active oil and gas well fields in the country: the Permian Basin.

The lizard was one of 71 species the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had promised congress that it would initiate a listing proposal for by September, 2008.  However, no proposal has been made by the release date of this report - December 16, 2008.

Range: Endemic to the Uinta Basin of eastern Utah and western Colorado. It occurs in a band six miles wide and 80 miles long.
Habitat Type: Only found on oil shale substrates of the Green River Formation.
Estimated Population: Around 6,200.

The main threats to this plant are oil shale development, conventional oil and gas drilling, and tar sands extraction.  Eighty-eight percent of the flower’s populations are in areas where active oil and gas exploration is already taking place.  Three-quarters of the habitat is on land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Because the penstemon is tied to a very specific substrate, climate change could be disastrous - it cannot move in response to global warming like some other species may.  Drought is also a concern, with only one of the past five years having resulted in substantial flowering.

Graham's Penstemon was included in the original list of plants that the Smithsonian determined warranted protection under the Act in 1975.  When listing was attempted in 2006, the BLM formed a “Penstemon strike team” to ensure it did not get protected.

Range: Lowland central Arizona south through western Mexico to the States of Colima and Michoacan.
Habitat Type: Currently, most are found in  Sonoran desert scrub communities.
Diet: Omnivorous – prey ranges from insects to mourning doves.
Estimated Population: Fewer than 50 adult pygmy-owls and fewer than 10 nest sites in Arizona in any given year.  

The primary threat to the owl’s continued existence is inadequate habitat protection.

The Western population of the cactus pygmy owl was once protected under the Endangered Species Act, but was removed  under the pretense that it did not constitute a distinct population segment - despite government scientists’ opinion that this group was indeed unique “on ecological conditions, pygmy owl distribution and genetics.”  

Similar to the wolverine and fluvial arctic grayling discussed earlier, protection has been denied using a controversial opinion that populations in other countries are sufficient to preclude the United States need to protect our own species.