BY: RACHEL MIPRO
Kansas Relefctor
TOPEKA — A western Kansas conservation deal in the works that earmarks thousands of acres for the lesser prairie chicken could pave the way for future conservation.
The lesser prairie chicken, known for its colorful spring mating dance, has been embroiled in a tug-of-war between environmental advocates and oil and gas industry opponents for years.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the lesser prairie chicken as threatened in Kansas in late 2022, saying the agency would determine areas of critical habitat for the bird. At the time of the listing, the organization estimated 90 percent of the bird’s habitat — unbroken tracts of native grasses — had vanished, leaving an estimated 32,000 lesser prairie chickens left.
Since the listing, multiple efforts have been made by Republicans on a local and national level to overturn protections. Lawmakers and public officials say ranchers, as well as the oil and gas industry, would be hurt.
Others have tried to walk a middle ground, compensating ranchers for sharing their land with the birds.
Wayne Walker, principal of Common Ground Capital, has put forward conservation banking as a solution to the feud between ranchers and birds. Conservation banking functions as an agreement among USFWS, landowners and developers. Landowners who preserve their land are given mitigation credits to sell to developers and businesses.
Common Ground Capital pays landowners who preserve their land through a system of conservation banking, selling mitigation credits to mainly energy industries. CGC partnered with Gardiner Angus Ranch last year and is currently finalizing a deal for almost 3,000 acres of preservation in Scott City with the Hoeme family. The deal is likely to be the largest conservation bank easement in Kansas.
“This is the last of the last of the great prairie ecosystem and Western legacy heritage that we have,” Walker said. “And the reason the prairie chickens are there is because they are still in a native state, and they’ve been well taken care of by generations and landowners.”
Walker said political rhetoric sometimes got in the way of reaching agreements, especially with politicians ramping up campaigns against bird protections in recent months.
“The playbook of these associations is that federal overreach is bad, ESA is bad and there’s just not enough people around that have seen a win-win sort of thing like we offer because it wasn’t even there until a few years ago,” Walker said.
“It was a challenge before the chicken was super politically kryptonite,” Walker added.
In April, Kansas joined Texas and Oklahoma in a lawsuit to block the listing. Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach said the federal ruling would interfere with the rights of landowners in the state and make oil drilling almost impossible in the western part of the state. He is one of several Republicans to argue that rainfall affects the bird populations and that when the state’s current drought ends, lesser prairie chicken numbers will bounce back.
“It will have devastating impacts on Kansas ranchers, Kansas oil producers and even Kansas wind farms. And on top of that, it’s illegal,” Kobach said at the time of the lawsuit announcement.
Earlier this month, Congress began efforts to overturn the listing through a Congressional Review Act resolution, carried by Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall. The Senate approved the resolution, but President Joe Biden’s administration has vowed to veto the resolution if it passes.
Walker said starting easement efforts for the prairie chicken could help open the door to wider preservation of Kansas’ prairie grasslands.
“You hear a lot of people talking about how we’re going to save the prairie grasslands in Kansas and southern plains, and this one thing alone won’t do it,” Walker said. “But what this will do is it will force the conversation outside of the prairie chicken so that people can see you’re gonna want to save this stuff.”