A Kansas Congressman is leading the charge to de-list the lesser prairie chicken, whose population is growing in his state.
Congressman Tracey Mann talked about the frustration growing among farmers in his state, over years of back and forth.
“Well, the Obama administration had added this bird to the threatened species list; Trump removed it; Biden added it. We’re now working to get it removed. Let’s just use sound science and the crazy thing is, if you really look at the population of the lesser prarie chicken, it almost exactly mirros rainfall. Years that we have a drought, the population goes down. Years that we get good rains, the population goes up but we should not be impacted. Our oil and gas producers, also our ag producers, going through all these huge regulations to protect this bird given the populations are actually increasing naturally and that’s what we ought to be focused on,” he explains.
Congressman Mann says that cattlemen have actually taken voluntary action to help protect the native bird, but they are still being targeted by heavy-handed regulation.
“There have been voluntary efforts by producer to increase the population so that heavy-handed regulation would’nt come upon them. The rug, you know, has been pulled out from underneath those producers very fresh. You know, I got a phone call about a year or so ago from a producer in southwest Kansas, saying that someone in Fish and Wildlife had spotted a lesser prarie chicken on their property. One of their pastures, and that afternoon they had to remove all of the livestock out of that pasture and each adjoining pasture as well. It just makes absolutely no sense. These regulations, what we’re doing and what it does it just adds cost and burdens to our ag producers as they’re trying to feed, fuel and clothe the world,” he adds.
Last mounth a district judge rueld in favor of landowners and struck down the lesser prairie chicken Biden rule.
Congressman Mann’s bill would remove the bird from the Endangered Species List.
