Environmentalists on Wednesday stepped up the legal pressure on the Fish and Wildlife Service to decide whether to protect a Nevada toad that’s potentially vulnerable to the region’s energy boom.
The federal lawsuit filed in the state of Arizona by the Center for Biological Diversity challenges the Fish and Wildlife’s Service’s alleged failure to meet an Endangered Species Act deadline for the Railroad Valley toad. The agency said in January 2024 that the toads may warrant ESA protection but has yet to take the next step of either proposing to list the species or not.
“This lawsuit is a final lifeline for Nevada’s embattled Railroad Valley toad,” said Megan Ortiz, staff attorney at the center, adding that the Trump administration’s “reckless push to ‘drill, baby, drill,’ could wipe these little toads off the face of the Earth.”
The group petitioned the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the toad as threatened or endangered in April 2022. In its initial finding issued in January 2024, the agency said the toad may warrant listing based on the petition’s “substantial scientific or commercial information” concerning potential threats from lithium production and oil and gas extraction via hydraulic fracturing.
