Trump removes protection for the lesser prairie chickens

A federal judge in Texas just stripped Endangered Species Act protections from the lesser prairie chicken in a move that shocked conservationists and handed a major victory to the oil and gas industry.

U.S. District Judge David Counts — a Trump appointee — agreed to the new administration's request to completely eliminate protections for a bird that has lost 90% of its habitat and dropped from millions of individuals to a small fraction of that number. The twist? The Fish and Wildlife Service itself asked the judge to throw out its own 2022 ruling that protected the species, claiming it had found a "serious defect" in how it divided the bird into northern and southern populations.

It's an unusual legal maneuver that conservation groups are calling bad faith politics disguised as science. "This ruling has nothing to do with science or the law and everything to do with kowtowing to the oil and gas industry," said Jason Rylander of the Center for Biological Diversity. The lesser prairie chicken's range spans five states from Colorado to West Texas, with the southern population facing higher extinction risk due to climate change and drought.

The Trump administration claims local conservation efforts will be enough to protect the species while it conducts a new review process. But conservationists say removing federal protections now effectively signs an extinction warrant for a bird that has already lost most of its grassland habitat to development. For a species that was doing just fine when millions roamed the Great Plains, it's a sobering reminder of how quickly things can unravel when politics trumps science.