By Rachel Mipro
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — A group of Kansas county officials and ranchers filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the latest attempt to block protections for a prairie bird.
The lawsuit, filed late Thursday, names the Kansas Natural Resource Coalition and several Kansas farmers and ranchers as plaintiffs in the case. The plaintiffs argue implementing Endangered Species Act protective regulations for the lesser prairie chicken would restrict land use, forcing Kansas agricultural producers into making expensive changes that could hurt business.
“KNRC is proud to take a stand in defense of our member counties and their constituents,” said Commissioner Gary Hayzlett, KNRC president. “This rule heavily regulates numerous essential public services, will regulate virtually anything many landowners might wish to do on their property and will have significant negative impact on individual livelihoods. The rule should be struck down.”
The lesser prairie chicken, a bird known for its colorful spring mating dance, has been the target of outrage since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the lesser prairie chicken as threatened in Kansas in late 2022. The organization estimated 90% of the bird’s habitat — intact tracts of native grasses — had vanished, leaving an estimated 32,000 lesser prairie chickens left.
The original endangered listing was the result of a yearslong environmental campaign to save the bird, and followed a 2019 lawsuit by conservation groups that warned the bird was in danger.
Since the listing, Republicans at the local and national levels have crusaded to overturn protections, arguing that ranchers — as well as the oil and gas industry — would be hurt by protections.
The federal lawsuit comes after a series of legal battles. In April, Kansas joined Texas and Oklahoma in a lawsuit to block the endangered species listing of the bird. Lesser prairie chickens can be found in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. In June, Congress began efforts to overturn the listing through a Congressional Review Act resolution, carried by Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall.
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, along with other Kansas politicians, said the federal ruling would interfere with the rights of landowners, arguing that rainfall affects the bird population, and that when the state’s current drought ends, lesser prairie chicken numbers will bounce back — an idea that environmental scientists call inaccurate.
The Thursday lawsuit has been taken on by Pacific Legal Foundation, a national public interest law firm that usually defends conservative and libertarian causes.
PLF was founded in 1973 by several staff of California’s then-Gov. Ronald Reagan. They wanted to create a conservative equivalent of groups like the American Civil Liberties Union after progressive organizations blocked Reagan’s welfare change attempts in court.
“The Endangered Species Act requires the government to balance conservation efforts with the economic impacts of regulations,” said Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Charles Yates. “The Fish and Wildlife Service plainly failed to do that in this case. It violates the constitutional separation of powers whenever an agency ignores the limitations placed on it by Congress.”