Kansas AG Kris Kobach joins Texas lawsuit over lesser prairie chicken endangered status
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach announced late Wednesday he is joining Texas and Oklahoma suing the federal government over the decision to call the lesser prairie chicken an endangered species.
The lawsuit, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, argues that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to consider existing voluntary conservation efforts in the states to protect the lesser prairie chicken and that the designation violates property rights.
In a statement, Kobach argued that listing the prairie chicken as endangered would make it impossible to drill new oil wells in western Kansas and have “devastating impacts” on ranchers and wind farms as well.
“These DC bureaucrats have probably never even stepped foot in the state of Kansas, let alone seen a prairie chicken,” Kobach said. “Yet there they sit in their offices 1,000 miles away making decisions that will directly affect Kansans’ lives.
In November, President Joe Biden’s administration announced it was listing the bird as endangered in the southern portion of the bird’s habitat region, including parts of New Mexico and Texas. The administration said it was listing the bird as threatened, a step below endangered, in the northern habitat region, including Colorado, Kansas and parts of Texas.
The status of the lesser prairie chicken has been a long fraught issue in Kansas. The day he was sworn in as state attorney general, Kobach promised one of his first lawsuits would be over the Biden administration’s plans to name the bird endangered.
In 2014, when the Obama administration listed the bird as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, Kobach championed a Kansas law authorizing the Kansas attorney general to take legal action if the federal government seeks to regulate the species within the state.
This story was originally published April 13, 2023 at 9:03 AM.
