WASHINGTON— The Center for Biological Diversity and Texas Campaign for the Environment filed an appeal today challenging a Texas court’s decision to strip federal Endangered Species Act protection from imperiled lesser prairie chicken. The decision came in response to a Trump administration request to strike the birds’ safeguards against oil and gas development and other threats.
“Courts can’t snatch away this bird’s chance at survival just because the Trump administration wants its protection gone,” said Jason Rylander, legal director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “Lesser prairie chickens deserve a fair day in court when their existence is on the line. Instead the court blindly accepted the Trump administration’s bogus claim of error without even considering the opposition.”
The iconic grassland birds, known for their elaborate mating dances, finally received Endangered Species Act protection in 2022 after nearly 30 years of agency delay and litigation. The Texas and New Mexico population was listed as endangered; a separate northern population in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado was listed as threatened.
Some of the affected states, oil and gas interests, and agricultural groups challenged the rule. Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reversed its previous support of the rule, alleging there had been a “fundamental error” in the original listing decision. This was despite the rule having been developed after careful scientific review and public comment.
“The lesser prairie chicken listing was carefully considered and checked all the legal and scientific boxes,” Rylander said. “This is a pure Trump power play to put oil and gas industry profits ahead of these birds’ survival.”
Conservation groups tried twice to intervene in the case to defend the listing, demonstrate the fallacy of this alleged “error,” and oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to vacate the listing rule without public process. Judge David Counts in Texas’s Western District denied the motions to intervene and, without even holding a hearing, accepted the government’s offer to settle and vacate the rule.
The groups are appealing both the court’s denial of their right to intervene and the final order vacating the listing rule to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Background
The Center’s predecessor organization, the Biodiversity Legal Foundation, petitioned to list the lesser prairie chicken as a threatened species in 1995.
In 2014, after lawsuits, the Fish and Wildlife Service finally listed lesser prairie chicken as threatened. But the following year, the oil and gas industry successfully challenged the listing in Midland, Texas, based on a poorly implemented and largely ineffective conservation agreement.
In 2016 the Center and its allies petitioned for emergency protections for lesser prairie chickens. A subsequent lawsuit by the Center and allies, and comments submitted in April 2021, led to a final rule in 2022 listing two Distinct Population Segments of the lesser prairie-chicken under the Endangered Species Act.
Lesser prairie chickens’ decline to a fraction of their historic numbers is the result of the degradation and fragmentation of the southern Great Plains. Conversion to crops, cattle grazing, the raising of powerlines and telephone poles, oil and gas drilling, and the incursion of woodlands, as well as drought and high temperatures linked to global warming, all harm the birds.
