Lesser Prairie-Chicken Listed as Endangered in Permian Basin

The Biden administration plans to list the lesser prairie-chicken as endangered in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, and threatened in Oklahoma, the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced Thursday.

The listings, which will take effect in January, could affect oil and gas drilling and wind power development across a region where energy development has destroyed millions of acres of the lesser prairie-chicken’s habitat.

The listing is “going to kill projects—renewable energy and electric transmission, two things that are the administration’s priorities,” said Brooke Marcus, a natural resources lawyer at Nossaman LLP in Austin whose work focuses ...