Chickens Gone with the Wind: How Oklahoma’s Wind Energy is Affecting the Lesser Prairie Chicken Population
In the borders between Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas, lies a small brown, grassland bird, with red air sacs inflating and deflating on its neck. It’s a lesser prairie chicken, finding a place to nest for its spring-endeavor to lay eggs.
These days, the bird is harder to come by in northwest Oklahoma, said David Hunter. Hunter is the owner of Hunter’s Livestock Supply in Woodward, where the 57-year-old grew up on the east side of town on his family’s 120-year-old slice of land.
“When I was a little boy, there were a few chickens out here on our side of town, but the town’s grown and we got blacktop roads where we used to have dirt, I’m sure that didn’t help them stay around, either,” Hunter said.
“There was just thousands of them, there were just thousands of them everywhere,” he said.
The bird’s population has declined over the years, dipping below 30,000, which was the estimated population, and considered an improvement, in 2015 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, according to a report by the USFWS. The USFWS also believed wind energy development to be an increasing threat to the bird’s population, according to the report. Northwest Oklahoma has the most wind farms in the state, according to en.openei.org.
The chicken was placed on the endangered species list in 2014 by the USFWS, but was recently taken off of the list as of July, 2016, according to a USFWS press release.
With the bird’s population back to standards, it still faces many problems in its environment, said Alva Gregory, Oklahoma Wildlife Conservation Department’s lesser prairie chicken supervisor.
“There’s many, many dynamics involved with this chicken — a great deal, as far as a loss of habitat, whether it’s wind, whether it’s transmission lines, oil and gas … I mean it’s just a huge gamut of stuff that affects it,” Gregory said.
“To put your finger on one individual thing, you just can’t do it,” he said.
Gregory said when it comes to wind energy developments, companies seem to continue placing wind turbines in the bird’s habitat areas.
“The ones as far as west of Woodward, those chicken numbers were going down, and then the wind farms come in, and they’re gone,” he said.
Gregory said, like Hunter, he also grew up near the panhandle where the birds are located.
“The main time you see the chickens is in the spring when they’re laying. They’re vocal and you hear them, and you know, you’d be out in the pastures gathering cattle and stuff, and you’d see chickens then,” he said.
Communities in northwest Oklahoma see wind turbines as a heated topic, with, or without the lesser prairie chicken, Gregory said.
“I hear varied responses from landowners — some of them hate the chickens, some of them love the chickens. It just depends on which side of the equation you look at,” he said.
Gregory said he thinks everybody likes the idea of green energy from wind turbines, but it comes down to who’s making money on them and who’s not.
“I know a guy who, he didn’t want them, but his neighbor did, and they put it right along the fence within a quarter mile of this guy’s house, and I guarantee you, him and his neighbor, I mean it’s an ugly deal.
“I guarantee you he’s fightin’-mad about it, he boils just every day because he has to listen to them and look at (the turbines),” Gregory said.
The community has become a “mixed bag of emotions,” with wind energy, he said.
The Impact of Wind Turbines on the Chickens
Studies have shown that the lesser prairie chickens tend to avoid any type of vertical structure, said Russ Horton, Oklahoma Wildlife Conservation Department research supervisor.
“They’re a bird of the grasslands and typically, knowing our native grasslands, there’s not a whole lot that sticks up,” Horton said.
Anything taller than the grass, he said, triggers the bird’s innate fear of ‘raptor perches.’
A ‘raptor’ is a bird which preys on other animals, according to hawkwatch.org.
“Those vertical structures, they’re perceived, as a raptor perch, and obviously the nest hens are geared to avoid those, to avoid detection when they’re nesting,” Horton said.
Raptors are a significant predator of ground-nesting birds of all kinds, he said.
“If there’s something sitting up where the raptor can sit and command the view of the surrounding area, the likelihood of him being able to detect that hen at some point during that month-plus-long masking cycle are greatly increased,” Horton said.
He said the birds find areas with vertical structures less desirable to nest in for that reason.
“It’s not just wind turbines; it’s tall trees, it’s power poles, you know, anything sticking up,” Horton said.
“A wind turbine, being a vertical structure, would be classed in the same category as anything else in terms of the likelihood of those birds tending to avoid them, especially during nesting season,” he said.
Horton said the nesting season in the spring can be a vulnerable time for the bird, which is why it’s important for it to pick a safe spot.
“From the time she initiates that nest, say she lays a dozen eggs, which would be on the range of an average clutch. She’s tied to a spot about the size of a dinner plate there for over a month,” he said.
“She’s incubating, and she’s coming and going to feed and maintain her own life,” Horton said.
The Real Cause of the Population Decline
Horton said there simply can’t be one cause for the decline of the chicken’s population.
“We saw declines in habitats and habitat conditions, we saw good nesting years, bad nesting years — we’ve seen all of that with and without the windmills,” he said.
“To say that the wind turbine is the cause of everything bad that’s ever happened to the lesser prairie chicken — no. That’s not the case,” Horton said.
It’s an ever-increasing list of things which affect the bird’s habitat, he said.
“Generally speaking, it’s habitat: habitat loss, habitat degradation. There used to be, at one point in time, just literally endless miles, miles, miles and miles of continuous good habitat, and in urban sprawls, you’ve seen roads, you’ve seen energy (expansions), you’ve seen conversions to non-native crops … all of that type of stuff,” Horton said.
It’s a cumulation of environmental impacts, he said, but wind turbines, being a vertical structure in the landscape, has to be considered.
“There’s certain places that are lucrative for wind for a variety of reasons, but even within a site, there are places that those turbines can be placed that will have minimal impact, or certainly less of an impact than somewhere else,” he said.
“Obviously we’d like to work with the companies to talk about siting. If they’re looking at two or three different properties, we can tell them at least this one will have the least impact,” Horton said.
He said if the companies cannot feasibly avoid the habitats, then minimizing the impact is the objective.
OG&E’s Take on the Issue
Oklahoma Gas and Electric company owns and operates three wind farms in northwest Oklahoma, said Usha Turner, OG&E Corporate Environmental Director.
The wind farms were built between 2003 and 2007, and the company began working with the Oklahoma Wildlife Conservation Department and the USFWS before the lesser prairie chicken was placed on the endangered species list, Turner said.
“We’ve had conversations with local and federal agencies about the lesser prairie chicken, although it’s only been officially listed since 2014, and then de-listed shortly thereafter,” she said.
The company has volunteered to be a member of the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, a group which covers the five states the bird is located in, she said, and began once the bird was placed on the endangered species list. OG&E paid an enrollment fee to the organization to join, Turner said.
“We have never had to pay mitigation fees to offset impact. So, all of the work we did in the area, we did prior to the listing. So there isn’t mitigation, per se, under the regulatory construct, but OG&E has contributed financially toward about 40,000 acres of habitat,” she said.
“Prior to that, we contributed under an agreement with the Oklahoma Wildlife Conservation, a commitment of over $8 million dollars to that habitat preservation,” Turner said.
She said the company has been considerate of the bird’s decline population levels throughout their developments.
“In conversations with the wildlife agencies, we actually, in the siting of transmission infrastructure, we relocated it from where we originally planned to put it to accommodate known habitat — even prior to listing,” she said.
The Future of the Lesser Prairie Chicken: What’s the Hatch?
The last two years have been good for the lesser prairie chicken, Horton said, as the population rose back to standard levels.
Hunter said it’s because the weather conditions have been better than in previous years, and has nothing to do with wind turbines. He said he doesn’t have any turbines on his property, and doesn’t have an issue with wind energy development.
“The windmills are already here, so I guess my calculation is the windmills don’t have a hell of a lot to do with it either,” he said.
“If the numbers increased, you’re back to the environmental deal again: just humidity, and rain and the right temperature,” Hunter said.
He said the problem lies in the eggs. Hunter experimented with raising quail a few years ago, he said, which required him to use an incubator to hatch the eggs.
“I didn’t get any of them to come out of the shell. The birds were in there — they would get a little hole pecked, maybe, but they couldn’t get out,” Hunter said.
“I have an incubator with water in it for humidity and thought everything was perfect, and none of those birds could get out of their shell,” he said.
Hunter said he called the company he bought the eggs from, and told them about the problem.
“They said, ‘did you spray them with water three or four times a day for the last week of their hatching period?’ and I said, ‘well, no, I got water in the incubator,’ and they said ‘yeah, that won’t work, you got to spray their eggs with a mist and soften those shells,’” he said.
Hunter said it’s the same thing in nature, and is the direct issue with the lesser prairie chicken eggs.
“If you don’t have enough humidity and you don’t have enough water, and the temperatures get over 100 degrees, you don’t have enough of any of that,” he said.
Hunter said the conservation agencies have spent millions of dollars on figuring out why the populations have been low.
“But the last two years, the numbers increased tremendously, and it’s all because conditions got right. It has nothing to do with anything else,” he said.
Conservation efforts have been put forth by landowners in Woodward, Hunter said, such as white clips being placed on barbed-wire fences to help the chickens see the fence, to prevent them from getting caught in the wire and dying.
“They put these little white clip things on barbed-wire fences to make them more visible so the prairie chicken won’t fly into them and kill themselves,” he said.
“Well, I’m gonna tell you something. Those barbed-wire fences for over 100 years, and the chickens have never run into them before. But they have this little program where they pay you to put clips on, and they pay you to do it. And everybody laughs about it,” he said.
Hunter said many landowners put the clips on their fences, and it’s carried on as an inside joke.
“They’ve done all these things and they’ve spent all this money, and I guarantee you: it just goes back to if conditions get right, you have big hatches,” he said.
“In some cases, the habitat has been diminished, but a lot of it, like I say, is just the fact that the conditions just haven’t been right to raise them. That’s the biggest factor I see,” Hunter said.
Horton said with some conservation and thoughtfulness as things develop, extinction isn’t something that has to happen.
“In light of that and folks coming at things from different angles, there’s no one involved and wants to see the lesser prairie chicken go extinct. We all have that in common,” he said.
“If there was a clear solution, you and I wouldn’t be talking about prairie chickens. It would have been implemented already. It’s not easy,” Horton said.
He said by working on common-ground, there are potential solutions.
Gregory, on the other hand, said he’s seeing a more bleak future for the chicken.
“If they develop wind like they would like to, in the areas they want to, I’m afraid that we’ll lose a lot of birds. The good wind sites are where the chickens are at,” he said.
“If they cover the northwest panhandle up, I don’t know where they’ll go,” Gregory said.
Horton said it’s going to require some give-and-take.
“Bottom-line is, the level heads can prevail and the common ground can be identified,” he said.
“We’re encouraged we’ll continue to have lesser prairie chickens on the landscape. A lot of good things have been done over the years, and good things will continue to be done,” Horton said.
Horton said he doesn’t see an inevitable outcome of the chicken going extinct.
“There are enough people with enough smart, enough resources and enough knowledge working on the issue,” he said.
“The bird will persist and hopefully we’ll see the habitat’s bird numbers increase,” Horton said.
There are currently 38 wind farms which are planned for construction in Oklahoma, according to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission website. Six of which will be built near or in the panhandle: two in Woodward and Ellis counties, two in Texas county, one in Beaver county and one in Woods county, according to the OCC.