The Lesser Prairie Chicken, Tympanuchus pallidicinctus, a species in the grouse family, is slightly smaller and paler than its near relative the Greater Prairie Chicken. About half of its current population lives in western Kansas, with the other half in the sandhills and prairies of western Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, the Llano Estacado of Texas, eastern New Mexico, and southeastern Colorado.
Like its larger relative, it is known for its lekking behavior.
Considered "vulnerable" by the IUCN due to its restricted and patchy range, it is vulnerable to habitat destruction. There is evidence suggesting that global warming may have a particularly detrimental influence by greatly reducing the size of the sagebrush ecosystem. Subfossil remains are known, e.g., from Rocky Arroyo in the Guadalupe Mountains, outside the species' current range but where more habitat existed in the less humid conditions in the outgoing last ice age. They disappeared apparently no later than about 8000 BC, soon after the start of human settlement, which may also have contributed to the local extinction.
The United States Department of the Interior has proposed creating a Lesser Prairie Chicken Preserve as a National Monument, but it remains controversial, and President Barack Obama has not taken action on the proposal under the Antiquities Act of 1906 as of February 2012.
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