Oklahoma AG threatens to sue feds over protection of prairie chicken
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond has joined the fray over the lesser prairie chicken, announcing that he would sue the Biden administration if a decision is not reversed to list the bird as a threatened species in Oklahoma.
Drummond said the final rule by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, published in late 2022, “presents an existential threat for cattle grazing, energy production, and other vital aspects of Western Oklahoma’s economy.”
U.S. Sen. Lankford and other lawmakers from the states affected by the decision recently won a twomonth delay in the effective date of the rule. It is now set to take effect on March 27.
Drummond said Friday he sent a letter to federal officials providing a 60-day notice of the intent to file litigation for failing to follow Section 4 of the Endangered Species Act with regard to the final rule issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service.
The fight over whether the lesser prairie chicken needs federal protection goes back many years and has revolved around whether economic activity, particularly agriculture and oil exploration, would be unduly curtailed.
The bird’s habitat includes parts of western Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, New Mexico and Colorado.
Private industries and landowners developed a range plan meant to accommodate the bird, but the Obama administration listed it as threatened. A federal judge in 2016 ruled that the administration had not properly considered the range plan and effectively canceled the listing.
Three environmental groups sued the Trump administration in 2019 to push it towards a new action to protect the bird.
That lawsuit said the species “once numbered around a million birds, but today there are fewer than 38,000 lesser prairie chickens remaining.”
The new rule lists the bird’s population as threatened in the northern portion of the range, which includes parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and Texas, and endangered in the southern part, which includes part of Texas and New Mexico.
“The primary threat impacting both DPSs (distinct population segments) is the ongoing loss of large, connected blocks of grassland and shrubland habitat,” the agency said in its final rule.
“In the Northern DPS, as a result of habitat loss and fragmentation, resiliency has been much reduced across two of the ecoregions in the Northern DPS when compared to historical conditions.
“However, this DPS still has redundancy across the three ecoregions and genetic and environmental representation. We expect habitat loss and fragmentation across the Northern DPS to continue into the foreseeable future, resulting in even further reduced resiliency. Because the Northern DPS is at risk of extinction in the foreseeable future, we are listing it as threatened.”