February 26, 2026 12:44 PM UTC

Clucking Time's Over For The Lesser Prairie-Chicken, For Now

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• by: Colorado Pols

As Michael Booth reports for the Colorado Sun, yet another decision by the Biden administration upholding environmental protection over corporate profits has been cast aside in favor of Donald Trump’s MAGA drill-for-all:

After pecking away for years, the Trump administration Wednesday finally erased all remaining endangered species protections for the lesser prairie-chicken, whose “booming” and red-throated mating dance highlighted biologists’ efforts to carve out more safe habitat across the Southwest in recent decades.

The charismatic grouse, whose recent habitat includes the far southeastern corner of Colorado in addition to parts of Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Kansas, had been a target of farming and oil and gas interests for years. They had resisted threatened or endangered status that made it harder to plow land, graze livestock or drill for oil, while environmental groups said habitat for the once-ubiquitous prairie bird had shrunk way too far.

The Santa Fe New Mexican landed a few chicken jokes of their own about the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s decision, which was enabled by a federal court ruling last fall from a Trump-appointed judge:

The lesser prairie chicken’s protected status is for the birds.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued its final decision Wednesday to strip Endangered Species Act protections from the fowl.

It may have ruffled feathers among fans of the small, speckled bird that calls New Mexico and other Western states home. But it’s hardly a surprise: In August, a U.S. District Court in Texas vacated the bird’s 2022 listing.

The DC-based Center for Biological Diversity has already appealed the court ruling that invalidated the Biden administration’s protections, and condemned yesterday’s announcement stripping the lesser prairie-chicken of all protections despite the loss of 90% of the bird’s habitat by 2022:

“It’s shameful that the Trump administration sees fit to sacrifice these magnificent birds for oil and gas industry profit,” said Jason Rylander, legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “Lesser prairie chickens may be lost forever without Endangered Species Act protections. We’re fighting this foolish decision to make sure they get them.”

In September the Center and the Texas Campaign for the Environment filed an appeal challenging a Texas court’s decision that cleared the way to strip the birds’ federal protections.

The iconic grassland birds, known for their elaborate mating dances, finally received Endangered Species Act protection in 2022 after nearly 30 years of agency delay and litigation. The Texas and New Mexico population was listed as endangered; a separate northern population in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado was listed as threatened.

Today’s decision officially removes federal protections from all populations of lesser prairie chickens.

The lesser prairie chicken’s decline to a fraction of its original numbers is the result of the degradation and fragmentation of the southern Great Plains. Oil and gas drilling, conversion to crops, cattle grazing, the raising of powerlines and telephone poles, and the incursion of woodlands — as well as drought and high temperatures linked to global warming — all harm the bird.

Although the immediate future of the lesser prairie-chicken is threatened by the removal of Endangered Species Act protections, it’s not the end of the debate over the species’ future as the FWS goes back to the drawing board to re-evaluate the bird’s status after all this regulatory back-and-forth. But it’s hard to have much confidence in that process when the desired outcome of the Trump administration has been made as plain as it has in this case.

Back in 2006, losing GOP candidate for governor Bob Beauprez was lampooned as the “elk whisperer” after he claimed that elk could be “trained” to avoid oil and gas drilling.

20 years later, the lesser prairie-chicken must somehow learn to get out of the way of the plow, the cow, and the drill…or go extinct.

Just today’s collateral damage from Making America Great Again.