Update — Kansas politicians: Enough about the stupid prairie chickens. We still don’t care | Opinion
Editor’s note: This story has been updated from its original form to add that Rep. Ron Estes, R-Wichita, filed a bill today to roll back protection for prairie chickens.
The ink is barely dry on the ballots from last month’s election and Kris Kobach, our new Attorney General-elect, is already doing Kobach things.
This week, I got a missive from Kobach’s campaign organization. At best it blurs the line between official duties and political campaigning. At worst, it’s scamming concerned citizens for campaign cash.
The email appears to solicit funds for state litigation to fight the listing of the Lesser Prairie Chicken — a type of wild grouse — as a threatened species. But if you hit the contribute button, the money goes straight to Kobach’s campaign fund.
“Mere weeks after the midterm elections, the Biden administration is pushing to drive Kansas oil and gas to extinction by listing the Lesser Prairie Chicken as an endangered species,” the message warns. “The declaration limits how, when and where Kansans can drill for oil on their own land. It limits how ranchers and farmers can use the land to feed the world. I’m ready to step up and defend Kansas landowners from this overreach. But I’ll need your help. I need your prayers and support and I need the financial arsenal to take on the Left in the press when the attacks come. AND WE KNOW THEY’RE COMING!”
The italics and boldface emphases are the Kobach campaign’s, not mine.
There’s so much wrong with this it’s hard to know where to begin.
Is Kobach really soliciting money to “step up and defend Kansas landowners?” Or is he just paying off debts from his last campaign and/or getting an early start on his next one?
The one thing we do know is that Kobach lent his campaign $200,000 in December 2021 and paid himself back from campaign contributions, three months before the election.
And speaking of overreach, Kobach’s statement on prairie chickens is so overblown that it’s laugh-worthy.
For about three months in the spring, lesser prairie roosters gather at dawn at sites called “leks” to strut their stuff and try to attract females to mate with.
They don’t like people hanging around while they do the chicken dance (would you?) — so they don’t mate, and the population declines.
Last week, I covered a press conference by Sen. Roger Marshall at a Kansas Livestock Association convention, where he promoted the same Chicken Little rhetoric about prairie chickens. Rep. Tracey Mann joined on video to announce his bill to let Congress overrule all experts on environmental regulations.
Funny, but Kansans just last month voted down that exact same idea at the state level.
But today, Rep. Ron Estes of Wichita weighed in, introducing a House Bill he calls the “Promoting Local Management of the Lesser Prairie-Chicken Act.”
So what’s this really about?
Farmers don’t have to worry about prairie chickens hardly at all. The birds generally avoid cropland and working farms are exempt from protective regulations.
Ranchers will have to follow a third party-approved grazing plan, so their cattle don’t overgraze the prairie and destroy the birds’ habitat.
And I once attended a Kansas oil and gas convention where a lobbyist whipped up the anti-chicken hysteria with this war cry: “You won’t be able to service your rigs until after 9:30 in the morning!!!”
Wiping out a species, or letting your employees start at a decent hour for three months out of the year — tough call, that.
In a floor speech introducing his bill to roll back prairie chicken protection, Estes complained of “Washington elites . . . undermining voluntary public-private conservation practices.”
In other words, Washington elites should get out of the way and let Kansas elites do what they want.
Given what we pay for beef, gasoline and natural gas, I’m highly doubtful that Kansas cattle and oil barons are finding it hard to feed their families this holiday season.
That was dramatically on display at the livestock convention. Marshall’s press conference was held in the main ballroom at the Wichita Hyatt Regency, before the tables were cleared.
Few seemed to have finished the prime filets mignons they were served for breakfast. I found myself wishing I’d brought a doggy bag for all the untouched steaks.
So to Roger, Tracey Kris and now, Ron: We’re not paying you to go to Washington and Topeka to fight against minor inconveniences for wealthy landowners.
Most of us have real problems. We’d rather you work on those.
This story was originally published December 7, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
