Despite Overwhelming Voluntary Support, Praire Chicken Now Listed

WASHINGTON, DC – For over ten years, farmers, ranchers and landowners across the southern High Plains have been working on a voluntary basis to enhance the habit for the lesser prairie-chicken while improving the long-term sustainability of the operations.

The Lesser Prairie-Chicken Initiative is part of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service’s (NRCS) Working Lands for Wildlife efforts and puts Farm Bill funds to work assisting landowners in priority habitat areas who volunteer to manage, enhance, and expand suitable lesser prairie-chicken habitat.

Just last year, an NRCS Report found that 883 landowners had worked to conserve 1.6 million acres for a bird that’s natural habitat is land almost entirely under private ownership (95 percent). This voluntary effort was 107 percent of the original goal outlined in the Initiative’s strategy.

On Wednesday, however, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced a proposal to list the lesser praire-chicken under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The move would actually list the Southern habitat, which includes Texas and New Mexico, as endangered while the Northern habitat of Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado would be listed as threatened.
(SOURCE: All Ag News)