Chalk one up for the flat-tailed horned lizard.

In the latest round in a 16-year legal battle to keep the squat lizard with dragon-like head spines safe from urban encroachment in its Southern California and Arizona haunts, a federal court judge has reinstated a 1993 proposal to list the creature as a threatened species.

U.S. District Judge Neil V. Wake’s ruling earlier this week in Arizona follows a recent 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals order that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service reconsider its earlier decision to deny the lizard protection under the Endangered Species Act.

That decision rejected a Bush administration policy that environmentalists charged favored development at the expense of the lizard and many plants and animals across the nation.

Since 1993, the agency has withdrawn three proposals to list the lizard on the grounds it was hard to find and, therefore, difficult to classify as threatened. Each withdrawal was challenged successfully in court by conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club and the Horned Lizard Conservation Society.

A final decision on the flat-tailed horned lizard is expected in a year.