Effect of New Mexico conservation agreements for the dunes sagebrush lizard on oil and gas well approval rates

The DSL is a small imperiled reptile found only in the shinnery oak sand dune habitats of eastern New Mexico and West Texas. In 2008, a pair of voluntary conservation agreements - a Candidate Conservation Agreement (CCA) and a CCA with Assurances (CCAA) - were created in New Mexico to protect the lizard and its habitat from activities including oil and gas development and agricultural expansion. We used data on oil and gas well approvals in New Mexico from before and after the agreements, inside and outside of DSL habitat, to check for an effect of the agreements. Well locations were mapped using ArcGIS to classify each as inside or outside of habitat based on the 2008 habitat map, then tallied across location and year using R. The data show that annual well approvals inside DSL habitat began declining rapidly after the agreements were adopted, but that the rate of approval outside the species' habitat was unchanged.