AUSTIN—Today, Lt. Governor David Dewhurst issued the following statement after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined that the dunes sagebrush lizard would not be listed under the Endangered Species Act:

"Including the sagebrush lizard on the Endangered Species List would have devastated our domestic energy industry and killed thousands of jobs in the Permian Basin and elsewhere. Through this process, Washington unnecessarily cast a grim cloud of regulatory uncertainty over job creators at a time when businesses are in desperate need of more predictability and common sense from the federal government.

"It's unfortunate that it took an outcry from Texas businesses and the strenuous objections of our leadership to get the federal government to recognize our state's voluntary conservation efforts. Texas has demonstrated that it's possible to protect wildlife without infringing on the rights of property owners or crippling our economy."