This white paper explains the problems with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s recent decision to not list the dunes sagebrush lizard and recommends improvements to Service regulations and procedures to address these problems. Our recommendations are extremely relevant to the upcoming decisions on whether to list the lesser prairie chicken, greater sage grouse, and other species on the candidate list under the Endangered Species Act.
As the previous Director in the Center for Conservation Innovation, Ya-Wei (Jake) oversaw the development of CCI and guided CCI’s work on improving endangered species conservation in the U.S.