Plan to protect prairie chickens angers some ranchers; some say biggest threat is from drought

One month after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated the lesser prairie chicken as a threatened species, it has produced a plan to protect the bird, which lives mainly in Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Colorado. Some farmers and ranchers are angry that they have to make room for what they consider an invasive species. (Conservation Fund photo)

"Officials are banking on a 373-page, five-state conservation plan to save the species,"  Janelle Stecklein reports for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. "The plan attempts to protect the chicken and address conservation by balancing the nesting and mating grounds of the chicken with business and agricultural interests."

The plan, "which has an enrollment fee of $2.25 per acre per year for industries, provides protection from 'take' and eliminates the typically long federal permitting process in habitat areas," Stecklein nots. "Farmers and ranchers, who have ideal nesting and breeding grounds, are eligible for annual payments of $20 to $40 an acre to incentivize the conservation and chicken-friendly practices."

Oklahoma landowners have already agreed to conserve 400,000 acres of prairie-chicken habitat, and state businesses "have pledged more than $30 million over the next three years toward chicken conservation efforts," Stecklein writes. They have also changed schedules to avoid disrupting mating season, which runs from March 1 through July 15. (Read more)

Not everyone is a fan of the plan, reports Frank Morris of High Plains Public Radio, which has studios in Garden City, Kan., and Amarillo, Texas. Norval Ralstin, who has thousands of acres with crops, cattle and wind turbines near Mullinville, Kan., told him government officials "almost think they can take over your property if you're not doing everything you can to make sure this species survives."

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt plans to fight the threatened-species listing, but "the real action is with the landowners," Morris writes. "If they don't agree to take payments to manage their properties in bird-friendly ways, the whole range-wide plan falls apart." Pruitt told Morris, "For the Fish and Wildlife Service to come out and say, 'Yes, we're going to classify the lesser prairie chicken as a threatened species, but we're not going to change anything,' seems to beg the question, then why did you take the step?"

Some, like Dodge City, Kan., rancher Wayne Keller, told Morris the chickens are dying from drought, not hunters: "Four years of just real brutal conditions. No morning dews, just blast furnace winds." With prairie grass dying, much of the wildlife that depends on it is suffering," Morris writes. "Lesser prairie chickens only live about a year and a half on average, so a couple of years without many chicks takes a serious toll." If breeders "can get the hens—and the weather—to cooperate, each couple could produce up to a dozen chicks and help build the bird's numbers. But with lawsuits, legislation and hard feelings to sort out, repairing its habitat is going to be more difficult." (Read more)