The Permian Basin harbors three of the United States' most endangered species: lesser prairie chickens, dunes sagebrush lizards, and freshwater mussels called Texas hornshells.
A large sedimentary basin in western Texas and southeastern New Mexico, the Permian Basin is also the highest-producing oil field in the country.
Decades of relentless oil drilling — plus livestock grazing, mining and pollution — have pushed all three to the brink of extinction.
And while each has won long-overdue protections under the Endangered Species Act, those protections are incomplete. Without safeguards for their home, these species will disappear.
They urgently need federal officials to designate critical habitat to protect the places they need to survive and recover.
Please take action urging the strongest possible critical habitat designations by year's end.
