Months after removing the lesser prairie chicken from its list of threatened species, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will “reconsider the status of a grouse found in pockets across the Great Plains,” said the Associated Press. The agency agreed to conduct the review after environmentalists filed a petition that argued that emergency protection is needed for the lesser prairie chicken.
The Center for Biological Diversity says there are roughly 25,000 birds left in the country. The habitat of the lesser prairie chicken has shrunk by more than 80 percent in the past two centuries. The species lives primarily in Kansas, and also in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Colorado.
Most of the range of the lesser prairie chicken is on private land, said the AP. States organized a conservation program that offered incentives to landowners to preserve habitat. When the Fish and Wildlife Service designated the lesser prairie chicken as threatened, the oil and gas industry went to federal court and won a ruling that the wildlife service failed to properly evaluate the conservation plan. The new review could be completed by mid-summer.