Guardians and allies filed a notice today of their intent to sue the Trump administration for failing to protect the lesser prairie chicken under the Endangered Species Act.
Lesser prairie chickens live in Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. There were once millions of the birds in the Southern Plains, but today that number has fallen to roughly 38,000. Oil and gas development, cropland conversion, livestock grazing, roads, and power lines all threaten their habitat. Climate change poses an additional threat: when the Southern Plains is roasting, lesser prairie chicken eggs cannot survive.
Guardians and allies petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the birds under the Endangered Species Act in September 2016. The agency promised to make a decision on those protections by the end of summer 2017. It never did.
Read the press release.
