ASHLAND — Staking out the elusive and rapidly disappearing lesser prairie chicken involves a stealthy 5:30 a.m. entry into a rebar-fortified bird blind, freezing into place as the sun rises and the birds begin to strut here and there, popcorning in an age-old mating dance.
Any lesser prairie chicken that has made it into the lek, an area of low grass in which mates are found and won, has already beaten the odds. Beset by politicians’ attempt to strip away federal protections and a dwindling habitat, the bird is battling extinction.
The grouse, known for its colorful spring mating dance, was listed as threatened in Kansas in late 2022 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. At the time, wildlife officials estimated that 90% of the habitat the birds once inhabited — intact tracts of native grasses — had vanished. With a multistate attempt to overturn this listing underway, the bird’s future has become even more tenuous.
Jackie Augustine, executive director of Audubon of Kansas, put the number of lesser prairie chickens in the U.S. at an estimated 26,591 in 2022, 75% of which were found in Kansas.
“We’ve lost so much of our prairie landscape,” Augustine said. “We’ve lost the bison, we’ve lost the wolves and the other things that used to roam in great herds all over. I feel like if we lose the prairie chicken, we’ve really lost the identity of the prairie. Because the prairie chicken is just so symbolic and charismatic of intact grassland landscapes, that if we lose them, we’ve really lost the connectivity of the landscape. It’s not just losing one species, we’re really losing a part of our heritage.”
Augustine, who first began studying the bird as a Ph.D. candidate at Kansas State University in 2007, has logged thousands of hours watching the birds in the field.
“You get to know them as individuals,” Augustine said. “And you get to see them over the course of the season. They just have so many behaviors that are so entertaining.”
The ones bobbing on the Gardiner Angus Ranch in the early hours of the morning on April 24, had made it to one of the few safe havens for the imperiled bird in the state. The ranch, which is about an hour south of Dodge City in the southwest part of the state, partners with Common Ground Capital on lesser prairie chicken conservation and prairie restoration efforts. CGC principal Wayne Walker spends a few months every year in Ashland to work on native prairie restoration on the Gardiner ranch. The organization invited news media and provided lodging so reporters could observe the ritual.
Sitting in the bird blind, Augustine pointed out a hawk swooping down to startle the birds on the lek.
Prairie chickens face risk at nearly every stage of life. With few to no defenses, Augustine said, if prairie chickens survive to adulthood, they typically only live two years between drought, habitat fragmentation, hawks, owls and ground predators that also eat chicks and eggs.
The state’s annual prairie burning presents additional challenges for the birds, leaving few places for the ground-nesting bird to successfully nest. Invasive tree species and the birds’ avoidance of man-made structures such as power lines and power plants further complicate matters.
The peak of mating season usually falls around mid-April. On the lek, the air fills with the sound of feet-stomping and high-pitched vocalizations as the males attempt to attract a female.
A female lesser prairie chicken that successfully makes it to the lek will mate and lay a clutch of about 8-12 eggs, laying one per day. If the nest isn’t invaded by predators, the eggs will incubate for 23 days before the chicks hatch and the generation continues.
This survival depends on having enough tall prairie grass to provide cover and camouflage, as well as insects to eat.
“They just need the grass,” Augustine said. “And that’s also what kind of gives me hope, is we know what they need. They need grass. They don’t need trees. They don’t need anything tall on their landscape, they just need grass.”
But she worries over the future of this “charismatic” and “comical” bird as she describes it, which has been at the center of political turmoil since it received its endangered listing in 2022.
Political turmoil
In April of 2023, Kansas joined Texas and Oklahoma in a lawsuit to block the endangered species listing of the bird. The case will be heard in a Texas federal district court this year.
In June, Congress began efforts to overturn the listing through a Congressional Review Act resolution, which allows Congress to overturn administrative rules, carried by Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall. President Joe Biden vetoed the move.
In July of 2023, a group of Kansas county officials and ranchers filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, arguing that implementing Endangered Species Act protective regulations for the lesser prairie chicken would restrict land use, forcing Kansas agricultural producers into making expensive changes that could hurt business.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, along with other Kansas politicians, said the federal ruling would interfere with the rights of landowners, arguing that ranchers — as well as the oil and gas industry — would be hurt by protections.
Because the birds need extensive tracts of open, well-managed prairie to survive in a state where 97% of land is privately owned, the fate of the lesser prairie chicken is largely in the hands of ranchers.
“Whether you live in Topeka, or Hays or Kansas City, wherever, the prairie chicken represents the health of these ecosystems out here,” Walker said. “And everybody in the cities benefit from the stewardship of the folks, the rural landowners. It’s the air you breathe, the water you drink, the beef you consume, the vegetables you eat, etc. It all starts out here in rural America. And the prairie chicken, it’s kind of the canary of the prairie. Is the prairie healthy? Can we keep providing these things to a growing human population, or can we not?”
Future of conservation
The key to the birds’ survival, some have said, is to compensate ranchers for sharing their land with the birds. One form of this method, known as conservation banking, is at play at the Gardiner Angus Ranch’s partnership with Common Ground Capital.
Conservation banking functions as an agreement among the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, landowners and developers. Landowners enter an agreement with a third-party developer and are paid to turn portions of their land into a protected habitat area. In most cases, the rancher can keep ranching on the land but cannot develop it.
The developer maintains and manages the habitat and in exchange for this preservation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approves habitat or species credits that the bank owners may sell to developers and other project proponents who need to offset project impacts to the same species occurring at another location.
Common Ground Capital, which focuses on lesser prairie chicken conservation banking, maintains the habitat at Gardiner and sells mitigation credits to energy industries.
“We’re trying to effect large, positive, disruptive change, so that these rural landscapes, people can keep making a living on them,” Walker said. “And to do that, you have to pay them a lot more money, market-based rates for being good stewards of the land. If we can do that. I think we can reverse the loss of the prairies, I think we can reverse the loss of the next generation moving to the cities and leaving these communities to dry up.”
Augustine is trying to focus on the present.
“I always said that I wanted to lead prairie chicken tours when I retired,” Augustine said. “And you know, I’m not sure that’s guaranteed in 20, 25 years, that these lesser prairie chickens are going to be here. I’m glad I get the opportunity to talk about them now and show people them now because the future is not guaranteed.”
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.
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