The Interior Department’s U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to list a population of the lesser prairie chicken as an endangered species, drawing criticism from the oil industry.
The proposal under the Endangered Species Act calls for a second population of the bird to be listed as threatened. The lesser prairie chicken is a species of grouse that has declined from hundreds of thousands to about 27,000 birds in 2020 due to habitat fragmentation and loss across the Southern Great Plains.
The bird is common to parts of the Great Plains in southeastern Colorado, eastern New Mexico, western Kansas, ...