Counting (Lesser Prairie) Chickens Afore They Hatch...

Okay, I’ll admit it.  I’m as paranoid as the next person, probably even more so than most (it’s because I pay attention!).  I looked at the front page of Woodward News (whose motto translated from the Latin is “Covering Your World Tuesday-Friday and Sunday”) last Friday (3/20) and saw my worst fears brought to life.  There on the front page was a photo that included an airborne black helicopter in the background and an obvious government agent in the foreground peering at something through binoculars. 

Supposedly this operation is all about counting lesser prairie chickens during their mating and nesting season.

Uh huh.

The fact that the article’s writer, Rachael Van Horn, went out of her way to assuage my paranoia by repeatedly stating that the spying really is about a little known bird whose numbers are dwindling…just made me that much more paranoid. 

Then I got kind of mad about it.  Let’s just assume for a minute that the government is really counting their chickens before they hatch (ha ha ha, I crack myself up).  You have only to see the picture (provided by the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC), whose motto translated from the Latin is “Less Cattle, More Chickens”) and wonder what they’re spending on air reconnaissance and ground surveillance.  That’s gotta run into some serious cash.  So I began checking into things, which just added to my paranoia.  Here’s what I found:

ODWC does not use tax dollars for its supposedly innocuous surveillance activities.  It has a $40-60 million annual budget (depending on whose numbers you want to believe) that is raised primarily through the sale of hunting and fishing licenses.  The rest comes from federal grant money, (interestingly) agriculture and oil leases that it owns, as well as donations from “endangered species funds” (see more below). 

The helo in the photo appears to be a type and size that would likely cost around $500,000 to buy – course that doesn’t include the flat black paint scheme or the operating cost (fuel, etc.) of buzzing poor lesser prairie chickens in Western Oklahoma to check on their mating habits. 

Shouldn’t they be using their airborne fleet to count gators in Ft. Supply?  Fun Fact:  For those of you unfamiliar with NW Oklahoma lore, legend has it that there are gators in Ft. Supply Lake.  When I was a kid, people used to debate this without end – “Well, I don’t think they could survive the winters.” Or my favorite, “I knew those people across the street did something with that damned alligator their creepy kid bought through a mail order catalog.”

But I digress…

I calmed down a bit once I realized that technically tax dollars aren’t being spent in the pursuit of lesser prairie chicken home movies.  But wait, there’s more…

I found a link between the lesser prairie chicken and an organization called the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) based in Switzerland.  The IUCN considers the lesser prairie chicken a “vulnerable” species, which is to say is vulnerable to habitat destruction.

Big deal, you say?  Well, please keep in mind that the IUCN is the same organization that until the mid-80’s favored the “Yellowstone Model” of conservation which called for the banishment of humans from vulnerable areas.  They changed their outlook when the donations began drying up. 

Now I would just about bet that ODWC is receiving some funding from IUCN for counting lesser prairie chickens (gotta pay for those high-end range finding night vision binoculars somehow)…or that the foreign-based organization is certainly influencing ODWC’s operations. 

And they wonder why I’m paranoid?

So here are a couple of suggestions for ways to count down the lesser prairie chicken’s numbers without pissing me off:

·        The next time that freakin’ GoogleEarth mobile drives up and down the roads out here taking pictures of people’s property, use those images to count birds.  It’ll save ODWC $$ that they can use on more important things like determining how the piranhas got into Crystal Beach Lake (ha ha ha just kidding).

·        Use the satellite imagery that the city/county/state/whoever uses to locate property improvements so they can gouge you for more tax dollars to count chickens on the ground.

·        Hijack one or two of Amazon.com drones that constantly pelt my roof with my latest purchases to buzz over the land to count chickens.

Finally, if you want to want to ensure that the mating and numbers of the lesser prairie chicken improve, here’s my advice:  LEAVE ‘EM ALONE!  Seriously.  The numbers have reduced over the past century for a number of reasons that include drought and agriculture operations and likely oil/gas operations (note the direct tie-in to ODWC funding).  It’s a species that has a very limited range, but I suspect that people tramping around in and flying black helicopters over their environment almost certainly has some impact.  I know it would affect my lekking behavior (look it up).