03/07/2026
NAGP STATEMENT REGARDING RECENT LESSER PRAIRIE-CHICKEN DELISTING
The North American Grouse Partnership (NAGP) issues the following statement on the recent decision by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to remove lesser prairie-chickens (LPC) from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) list:
Grasslands are the most threatened ecosystem on the continent and in the world, as are the wildlife species found there, and none more so than the LPC, which have consistently been found since 1998 as warranting listing under the ESA. The other threatened component of grasslands are ranchers, with 40% fewer livestock producers today than late last century. We lose an astonishing 2 million acres of grasslands every single year.
The main threat to grasslands is economic: 95% of remaining LPC habitat in the southwestern Great Plains is on privately-owned working rangelands. Ranching pays less than any other form of land use. So grasslands are often overgrazed or converted to more lucrative uses that don’t support wildlife. The ever-changing legal status of LPC under the ESA sometimes helps slow land use conversion, but it won’t stop or reverse grassland losses, which is what’s needed now.
NAGP supports the Ranching Strongholds proposal from a group of rancher-conservationists called the Lesser Prairie-Chicken Landowner Alliance. Their mission is to save ranching, rural communities, water, and wildlife, and LPC too. They will establish ten, 200,000-acre Ranching Strongholds by paying ranchers fair market value for the conservation services their healthy rangelands provide for all Americans so they can keep ranching and resist converting to other land uses. We already have 100,000 acres of LPC habitat conserved, with only 1.3 million more acres needed to fully recover and negate the need to list LPC and other species under the ESA while simultaneously increasing food and water security.
Let’s invest in Ranching Strongholds now to benefit all Americans. Visit https://www.grousepartners.org/lpcla for more information.
For a recent story on the delisting, see https://apnews.com/article/lesser-prairie-chicken-endangered-species-threatened-23c6694e0d4759f1ac09ac5125ed7865
