By David Martin Davies, Texas Public Radio
Dallas, TX –
Could a Texas native chicken stand in the way of Texas wind energy expansion?
There's growing concern that if the Lesser Prairie Chicken gets federal protection as a threatened or endangered species the wind energy boom of west Texas could be impacted.
Heather Whitlaw is a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department biologist. She says the threat to the birds isn't flying into the giant blades but just looking at the massive turbines freaks out the mama chickens.
Heather Whitlaw: Females that are nesting and females that are raising up chicks tend to avoid tall vertical structures on the grassland prairie landscape.
The Texas Public Utility Commission has targeted vast areas of west Texas and the Panhandle for wind development but this is also the area that the chickens need to survive.
Whitlaw says the chickens need a lot of land for their habitat.
Whitlaw: The prairie chickens need big country - about 20 thousand acres to maintain a population of about 100 to 150 birds. When that gets fragmented broken up by wind farms we reduce those islands of habitat that are available to the birds and eventually we make them so small that the birds don't really have a home anymore.
It's estimated that the lesser prairie chicken could get federal protection status in less than 2 years.