Conservation groups want a Texas court to overturn the recent gutting of federal protections for the lesser prairie chicken, a near-flightless bird living in the grasslands of Eastern New Mexico and four other states.
In 2022, the Biden Administration offered the bird protection under the Endangered Species Act. Federal officials, through a public process, designated the smaller southern population in New Mexico and the Texas panhandle as “endangered,” and the northern population across Kansas, Oklahoma, northern Texas and Eastern Colorado as “threatened.”
In August, a Texas judge stripped federal protections for the chicken. Precipitating the August decision was the Trump Administration’s seismic about-face in May, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said there was a “fundamental error” in the Biden Administration’s listing of the bird in 2022. The memo requested the judge side with opponents suing against the protections, which included the states of Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma, along with representatives from the ranching and petroleum industries.
The Arizona-based nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity filed the appeal in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Monday, asking a panel of judges to overturn the decision and allow conservation groups to enter the proceedings — arguments denied by the lower courts.
“The Trump Administration had no legal or scientific basis for its reversal,” Jason Rylander, the legal director for the group’s Climate Law Institute, told Source NM.
The chicken — known for its quirky courtship dances involving inflated cheek pouches and stomping — has been in and out of court for the past three decades as its numbers declined from the millions into about 26,000 (as of 2022) across the grasslands of New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.
Rylen said arguments could be presented by this fall, but that the population lost all federal protections, including ones that prohibited hunting or killing the chickens. While more chickens survive in the Colorado, Oklahoma and Kansas portion of its range, the species faces habitat losses from industry and climate change, threatening its long-term survival — especially in New Mexico.
“The southern population of the lesser prairie chicken is now at severe risk of blinking out entirely,” he said.
Rylander said the bigger picture is the upheaval of environmental protections by the federal government.
“The Trump administration has taken an anti-science, scorched-earth approach to environmental conservation and public land protections, stripping Clean Air Act protections, denying climate change, and declaring endangered species persona non grata,” Rylander said. “I think that’s just a horrifying prospect for conservation in America.”
