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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 103 / Tuesday, June 1, 2021 / Proposed Rules
ha of privately owned lands for the benefit of the lesser prairie-chicken in Texas. The Nature Conservancy of Texas acquired approximately 10,635 ac 4,303
ha in Cochran, Terry, and Yoakum Counties. In 2014, The Nature Conservancy donated this land to TPWD. The TPWD acquired an additional 3,402 ac 1,377 ha contiguous to the Yoakum Dunes Preserve creating the 14,037-ac 5,681ha Yoakum Dunes Wildlife Management Area. In 2015, through the RWP process, WAFWA acquired an additional 1,604 ac 649 ha in Cochran County, nearly 3 mi 5 km west of the Yoakum Dunes Wildlife Management Area. The land was deeded to TPWD
soon after acquisition. In 2016, an additional 320 ac 129 ha was purchased by TPWD bordering the WAFWA acquired tract creating an additional 1,924-ac 779-ha property that is being managed as part of the Yoakum Dunes Wildlife Management Area, now at 15,961 ac 6,459 ha.
The BLMs Special Status Species RMPA, which was approved in April 2008, addressed the concerns and future management of lesser prairie-chicken and dunes sagebrush lizard habitats on BLM lands and established the Lesser Prairie-Chicken Habitat Preservation Area of Critical Environmental Concern BLM 2008, entire. Since the RMPA
was approved in 2008, BLM has closed approximately 300,000 ac 121,000 ha to future oil and gas leasing and closed approximately 850,000 ac 344,000 ha to wind and solar development BLM
2008, p. 3. From 2008 to 2020, they have reclaimed 3,500 ac 1,416 ha of abandoned well pads and associated roads and required burial of power lines within 2 mi 3.2 km of lesser prairiechicken leks. Additionally, BLM has implemented control efforts for mesquite on 832,104 ac 336,740 ha and has plans to do so on an additional 30,000 ac 12,141 ha annually. In 2010, BLM acquired 7,440 ac 3,010 ha of land east of Roswell, New Mexico, to complete the 54,000-ac 21,853-ha ACEC for lesser prairie-chicken, which is managed to protect key habitat.
Following approval of the RMPA, a candidate conservation agreement CCA and CCAA was drafted by a team including the Service, BLM, Center of Excellence for Hazardous Material Management CEHMM, and participating cooperators to address the conservation needs of the lesser prairiechicken and the dunes sagebrush lizard.

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Since the CCA and CCAA were finalized in 2008, 43 oil and gas companies have enrolled a total of 1,964,163 ac 794,868
ha in the historical range of the lesser prairie-chicken. In addition, 72 ranchers in New Mexico and the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish have enrolled a total of 2,055,461 ac 831,815
ha. The New Mexico State Land Office has enrolled a total of 406,673 ac 164,575 ha in the historical range of the lesser prairie-chicken. The CCA and CCAA have treated 79,297 ac 32,090
ha of mesquite and reclaimed 154
abandoned well pads and associated roads. CEHMM has also removed 7,564
ac 3,061 ha of dead, standing mesquite, and has another 12,000 ac 5,000 ha scheduled in the upcoming 2
years.
The Nature Conservancy owns and manages the 28,000-ac 11,331-ha Milnesand Prairie Preserve near Milnesand, New Mexico. Additionally, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish has designated 30 Prairie Chicken Areas PCAs specifically for management of the lesser prairiechicken ranging in size from 28 to 7,189
ac 11 to 2,909 ha and totaling more than 27,262 ac 11,033 ha. In 2007, the State Game Commission used New Mexico State Land Conservation Appropriation funding to acquire 5,285
ac 2,137 ha of private ranchland in Roosevelt County. The Services PFW
program in New Mexico has contributed financial and technical assistance for restoration and enhancement activities benefitting the lesser prairie-chicken in New Mexico. In 2016, the PFW program executed a private land agreement on 630 ac 255 ha for treating invasive species with a prescribed burn. In 2020
the PFW program executed a private land agreement for a prescribed burn on 155 ac 63 ha.
Conditions and Trends Rangewide Trends The lesser prairie-chicken estimated historical range encompasses an area of approximately 115 million ac 47
million ha. As discussed in Background, not all of the area within this historical range was evenly occupied by lesser prairie-chicken, and some of the area may not have been suitable to regularly support lesser prairie-chicken populations Boal and Haukos 2016, p. 6. However, the current range of the lesser prairiechicken has been significantly reduced from the historical range, and estimates
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of the reduction vary from greater than 90 percent Hagen and Giesen 2005, unpaginated to approximately 83
percent Van Pelt et al. 2013, p. 3.
We estimated the current amount and configuration of potential lesser prairiechicken usable area within the analysis area using the geospatial analysis described in the SSA report Service 2021, Section 3.2; Appendix B, Parts 1, 2, and 3 and considering existing impacts as described above. The total area of all potential usable land cover that may be consistent with lesser prairie-chicken areas that have the potential to support lesser prairiechicken use and potential usable, unimpacted land cover that is, not impacted by landscape features categories in each ecoregion and rangewide is shown in Table 1.
To assess lesser prairie-chicken habitat at a larger scale and incorporate some measure of connectivity and fragmentation, we then grouped the areas of potential usable, unimpacted land cover based on the proximity of other areas with potential usable, unimpacted lesser prairie-chicken land cover. To do this, we used a nearest neighbor geospatial process to determine how much potential usable land cover is within 1 mi 1.6 km of any area of potential usable land cover.
This nearest neighbor analysis gives an estimate of how closely potential usable, unimpacted land cover is clustered together, versus spread apart, from other potential usable, unimpacted land cover. Areas with at least 60 percent potential usable, unimpacted land cover within 1 mi 1.6 km were grouped. The 60 percent threshold was chosen because maintaining grassland in large blocks is vital to conservation of the species Ross et al. 2016a, entire; Hagen and Elmore 2016, entire; Spencer et al.
2017, entire; Sullins et al. 2019, entire, and these studies indicate that landscapes consisting of greater than 60% grassland are required to support lesser prairie-chicken populations. This approach eliminates small, isolated, and fragmented patches of otherwise potential usable land cover that are not likely to support persistent populations of the lesser prairie-chicken. A separate analysis found that the areas with 60
percent or greater unimpacted potential usable land cover within 1 mile 1.6 km captured approximately 90 percent of known leks Service 2021, Appendix B, Part 3.

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