Conservationists and cattle ranchers are working together to restore grassland for the lesser prairie chicken. The bird used to roam Kansas, but has lost most of its habitat to crop production. 

ASHLAND, Kansas — In the remaining grasslands in Kansas lives the lesser prairie chicken, a stocky, quail-like bird that used to roam the Great Plains. They once fed, nested, danced and mated in the vast grasslands that covered the middle of the country.

There used to be many birds making their unique cackling boom noises. That was before people transformed the prairie to produce food and make energy. Now the remaining prairie chickens are dispersed and disconnected.

The prairie chicken doesn’t have the historical prominence connecting it to the Plains that buffalo and pronghorn enjoy. It’s a less-visible animal that relies on the dwindling grasslands.

A conservation bank company and ranchers in southern Kansas are working to reverse that. They are combining business and conservation to create prairie chicken conservation credits that pay for restoring habitat and benefit the cattle ranchers that own the land.

Conservation group Common Ground Capital has made deals with ranchers across several southern Plains states, including Kansas. As part of one of those deals, Gardiner Ranch near Ashland has started the process of clearing out invasive salt cedars to restore the natural prairie.

The program is using something similar to the system of buying and selling carbon credits, but they’re chicken habitat credits. Companies pay for the lesser prairie chicken credits so they continue developing in other prairie chicken habitats. Common Ground Capital makes a profit selling these credits, and uses that money to pay ranchers to restore and maintain the habitat the prairie chickens need.

Afterward, Common Ground Capital is responsible for the long-term management plan to fund the conservation of the prairie chickens. The conservation plan is approved by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

These long-term agreements with cattle ranchers are a way to not only conserve the prairie chicken, but also the grassland the ranchers need for cattle.

Wayne Walker, founder of Common Ground Capital, looks out on hundreds of acres of restored prairie.

“That’s what it all used to look like,” he said looking at acres of repaired grasslands where invasive trees had been removed. “These are some of the last remaining native grasslands in Kansas.”

The lesser prairie chicken used to populate the Plains in the hundreds of thousands. But due to habitat loss, invasive species like the salt cedars in western Kansas and grassland converted to cropland, their population has dwindled to about 26,000. That’s about the same as the number of people in Dodge City but scattered across the entire southern Plains.

A critical piece of this program is trying to reconnect the scattered bird populations.

“We’ve got to reconnect habitat to bring back prairies in strategic ways, so that prairie chickens can have more habitat to populate on,” Walker said.

The strategy of Walker’s company is to pay ranchers to restore grassland, then sell conservation credits to companies who are causing damage to lesser prairie chicken habitat elsewhere.

It’s a way for companies to offset their impact on a threatened species or ecosystem, while continuing development in parts of the bird’s range.

Prairie birds like the lesser prairie chicken have an aversion to anything vertical. It’s their natural instinct to avoid predators like hawks that hide in trees.

That means the birds don’t really like wind turbines, and the conservation credits are appealing to companies building wind turbines in other parts of the prairie chicken’s habitat.

Walker said this process may not be the most popular with environmentalists because there is compromise, but it’s a way to jumpstart conservation by combining industry and business with conservation efforts.

Common Ground Capital sells conservation credits to mostly renewable energy companies in Kansas and Colorado, for $2,500 per acre. That is how they are able to pay ranchers for conservation efforts like removing invasive trees to make habitat better for the birds.

On the Gardiner Ranch, Dillon Hilton stood on a bridge, one side covered with salt cedars, the other expansive grassland. This land was burned by the Starbuck wildfire in 2017, which cleared out a lot of invasive species and stopped at the bridge.

Hilton, who also works as a volunteer firefighter, said he remembers driving down the bridge on the ranch going 60 miles per hour, and the fire keeping up with him.

“It was devastating,” Hilton said. “We lost cattle, fences, structures.”

But if there was a bright side, he said it would be how much prairie the fire restored. The invasive trees were wiped out by the fire, but the grassland easily recovered.

Grasslands disappearing

Grasslands are disappearing fast, over half have already been lost to crop production according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

And the grassland ecosystem is shriveling up with it. Grasslands also benefit the climate by sucking up the carbon in the air and storing it underground.

But the grasslands that remain are owned by ranchers like Mark Gardiner, owner of the Gardiner Ranch, which supplies cattle to National beef in Dodge City and Liberal.

“When I was first approached by Wayne, I told him, ‘you do know (the prairie chickens) are because of us not in spite of us,’” Gardiner said.

His 46,000 acres not only support the conservation of the lesser prairie chicken, but also his cattle, which supports his ranching lifestyle.

“If we don’t feed the world the ecosystem won’t make it, and any ecosystem you lose you don’t get it back,” Gardiner said.

Biologist and grassland conservationist Stephanie Manes said that to keep both humans and the birds thriving together, the prairies need to be maintained.

Invasive species like salt cedars have overtaken the grassland and have pushed out the prairie chicken, along with native grasses. It’s not good for the ecosystem or the soil. She said they came from Europe, most likely brought by white settlers to use as windbreaks and landscape decoration.

It’s a tough plant that is perennial and can come back from a lot of damage.

“That is why the roller chopping and herbicide treatment to actually kill the plant is so essential,” Manes said. “But that’s very expensive.”

That’s where a program like this one is helpful. It provides financial power to ranchers to get rid of trees they already wanted out of their ranchland.

The roller chopper with Hilton and his team mows down the salt cedars. They then spray with herbicide and routinely use prescribed burns.

So far, the program has been able to conserve 75,000 acres of grassland for the lesser prairie chicken. The goal is to continue the program and in ten years conserve 1 million acres, and hopefully see the lesser prairie chicken population bounce back from 26,000 to 67,000.

Last year, something that would help the conservation group was the federal relisting of the lesser prairie chicken as endangered. This gave the bird extra protection, but was met with a lot of pushback.

The oil and gas industry, cattle industry and state attorneys general from Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas filed lawsuits against the listing.

Common Ground Capital’s lawyers predict the court case should wrap up early in 2025.

Holding his horse, Mark Gardiner said that he’s grown up with the lesser prairie chickens all his life. They represent a healthy prairie that he has made a life and career out of.

“We are thankful to keep this ecosystem, because humans are part of that system too,” Gardiner said.

Calen Moore covers western Kansas for High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service. You can email him at cmoore@hppr.org.

The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.

Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished by news media at no cost with proper attribution and a link to ksnewsservice.org.

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