Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) removed the lesser prairie chicken from the list of threatened and endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in response to a 2015 court ruling. The ruling vacated FWS’s decision to list the species as threatened. FWS also announced it will initiate another evaluation of the species using the same listing methods. Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) issued the following statement:

“The Obama Administration has been merciless in its quest to list species—even when the court says otherwise. The Fish & Wildlife Service has fast-tracked hundreds of ESA listings without credible science through settlement agreements behind closed doors. When they are ordered by a court to revisit one of their merit-less listings, they plow ahead with the same agenda-driven methods. The Department of the Interior has demonstrated their complete lack of credibility on the Endangered Species Act and the dire need for ESA reform. Only time will tell if this is anything more than a temporary, court-ordered reprieve for the Administration, before they revert back to the same old ways.”

Background:

In 2011, the Obama Administration negotiated and agreed to two litigation settlements involving petitions by two national environmental organizations, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the WildEarth Guardians (WEG) to make hundreds of species listings and designate critical habitat decisions under the ESA through more than 85 lawsuits and legal actions. These settlements mandate that over 250 candidate species must be reviewed for final listing as either threatened or endangered within specific deadlines. The lesser prairie chicken, found throughout 62,000 square miles on the prairies of Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico, is one of the most sweeping listings included in the 2011 mega-settlements.  

In 2015, the Western District of Texas vacated the listing on the grounds that FWS's decision was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), and failed to properly evaluate existing conservation efforts by states.