A voluntary conservation plan for the lesser prairie chicken was supported by the U.S wildlife authorities on Wednesday.
The Tympanuchus pallidicinctus is from the family of grouse which is typically paler and smaller than its next of kin, the Greater Prairie Chicken. These chicken used to run abound in five states in the broad,flat lands of the Great Plains. However, about 84 percent of the prairies and grasslands have undergone land conversion resulting to lost habitat for the lesser prairie chicken. For years, the species is one of the candidates for federal conservation under the Endangered Species Act.
Currently, the bird's population is estimated at 18,000. But just a year earlier, in December 2012, when the species was first requested to be listed in the Endangered Species Act, the population was still 45,000 at most.
The conservation plan proposed that landowners, who manage their land properties with the advantage of the lesser prairie chicken in mind, will be given financial incentives. This plan was drafted to diminish or avoid the impact of land development in the chicken's habitat, such as oil and gas digging. This can be possible by collecting money from impact fees and enrolments which could partly be used to pay the landowners adhering to conservation efforts.
The plan was proposed by the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (WAFWA). This institution represents several states in North America including Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas where around 1,500 wild species can be found.
The plan's goal is to reach a target of 67,000 lesser prairie chickens in 10 years, according to WAFWA grassland coördinator Bill Van Pelt. WAFWA scientists believe that this target is possible because the species' population used to be denser in 2006, which is fairly recent.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is considering the effectiveness of approving this plan and will soon arrive at a decision by March 2014 if the lesser prairie chicken will be added on the list of Endangered Species.
"The prairie chicken's decline tells us native grasslands in the Great Plains are in trouble. And by helping the lesser prairie chicken, we'll also be working to restore the health of our native grasslands — which support many hundreds of other species but also support the local economies in the communities of that region of the country," said Dan Ashe, director for the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service, to SFGate.
