June 22nd, 2021 Located on the Wall Street Journal by The Editorial Board
Why did the lesser prairie chicken cross the road? Apparently to shut down oil and gas development. Witness how the Biden Administration is reviving an Obama Administration effort to list the member of the grouse family under the Endangered Species Act to restrict energy development.
Late last month the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) proposed a regulation to list the lesser prairie chicken as either threatened or endangered, depending on the region. More than 95% of the lesser prairie chicken’s range falls on private property across Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado. Its range also overlaps with the Permian Basin—the most productive oil-and-gas shale field in the U.S. Green groups have for years used the Endangered Species Act as a way to restrict land development.
In 2015 a federal judge blocked the Obama prairie chicken endangered listing because the Administration had not sufficiently considered alternatives to conserve bird habitat. Businesses and state and federal regulators had already agreed to a plan to support conservation efforts, which gave landowners flexibility to manage their property and compensated them for improving the bird’s habitat.
To continue reading: https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-prairie-chicken-fillet-11624401383