Oklahoma · UplandLesser prairie-chicken

Lesser prairie-chicken in Oklahoma is restricted to the northwestern part of the state, where it occupies two distinct native vegetation communities that once spanned 22 counties but have contracted to roughly 37 percent of that former distribution (Oklahoma's 2012 LEPC Conservation Plan, citing Horton 2000). ODWC's own current Lesser Prairie-Chicken Program lists Beaver, Beckham, Cimarron, Ellis, Harper, Roger Mills, Texas, Woods, and Woodward as the counties where landowner habitat programs operate, matching the species' present distribution. Within that footprint the Conservation Plan distinguishes a sand-sagebrush population (Texas, Beaver, Harper, and Woods counties, with occasional birds in Cimarron County in the far panhandle) from a shinnery-oak population (Ellis, Roger Mills, and Beckham counties, with occasional birds in Dewey County) to the south and east of the sand-sagebrush block — the same two-habitat-type split used to describe the species across its five-state range. The species lost federal ESA protection in 2026 (both DPSs delisted), but Oklahoma's own SGCN/SWAP listing and ODWC lek-survey monitoring continue independent of that federal status change.