Text by Paula Dittrick, TMNCPC blogmaster. Photo by Erik Wolf from TMNCPC archives.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) extended its public comment period from early August until September 2021 regarding FWS’s proposal to list two distinct population segments (DPS) of Lesser prairie chickens under the Endangered Species Act.
The Southern DPS covers the shinnery oak ecoregion in Texas and New Mexico. The Northern DPS covers the sand sagebrush ecoregion, the mixed grass ecoregion, and the short grass/Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) ecoregion in Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Kansas.
FWS determined the Southern DPS is warranted for listing as endangered and the Northern DPS is warranted for listing as threatened. The agency attributes habitat loss and fragmentation. The Southern DPS also is vulnerable to serve droughts.
Ted Koch, executive director of the North American Grouse Partnership called a June announcement about Lesser prairie chickens “emblematic of the loss of prairie habitats across North America, making prairies the most threatened ecosystem on the continent.”
Public comments can be submitted by Sept. 1 electronically through the Federal eRulemaking Portal and searching for docket number FWS-R2-ES-2021-0015.
Types of prairie chickens
Three kinds of prairie chickens once occurred in Texas but only two types remain, said the Texas State Historic Association Handbook of Texas. The three types: the Greater prairie chicken (Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus), the Lesser prairie chicken (Tympanuchus pallidicinctus), and Attwater’s prairie chicken (Tympanuchus cupido attwateri).
The greater prairie chicken, largest of the three types, was indigenous from northeastern Texas southwest along the Blackland Prairie, possibly to Austin. Now considered extinct in Texas, Greater prairie chicken sightings were scarce by 1900 because of intensified agriculture, hunting, and urban pressure. “Some researchers suggest that the ultimate cause of its demise was the dust bowl of the 1930s,” the Handbook of Texas said.
The Lesser prairie chicken is confined to the Texas Panhandle area now although its range once was larger. It benefitted from a federal conservation reserve program under which participating farmers agreed to put highly erodible land back into grass (1985-1995).
The smaller and lighter Attwater’s prairie chicken, named for Henry Philemon Attwater, once inhabited 6 million acres of coastal prairie from southwestern Louisiana to near Brownsville, Texas. Currently, Attwater’s prairie chickens can be seen most easily at the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge near Eagle Lake (Colorado County).