Oil Field Bird’s Species Protection Axed in State, Industry Suit

A Texas federal judge vacated the protection of the lesser prairie-chicken under the Endangered Species Act.

Judge David Counts vacated and remanded the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2022 rule Tuesday in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas. It had listed the grouse-like bird as endangered in the Permian Basin oil fields of West Texas and New Mexico, and a northern population as threatened in the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and the surrounding areas.

Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, and a group of oil and gas plaintiffs sued over the listings in 2023, saying FWS improperly ...