Texas · UplandLesser prairie-chicken

Texas's lesser prairie chicken population has no open season (federally listed as threatened) and, unlike Attwater's, is not a single-site remnant but two disconnected native populations within the historic shinnery-oak/sand-sagebrush prairie of the Panhandle and South Plains. The northeastern population sits along the Oklahoma border, centered on Hemphill, Wheeler, and Lipscomb counties (with the species' range there described as extending from Lipscomb south to Collingsworth County). The southwestern population sits along the New Mexico border in the South Plains, in the shinnery-oak sand country in the vicinity of Yoakum, Cochran, Terry, Bailey, Andrews, and Gaines counties. TPWD's own 14,037-acre Yoakum Dunes Wildlife Management Area, spanning Cochran, Terry, and Yoakum counties and authorized in 2014 specifically as a lesser prairie chicken (and grassland-bird) refuge, anchors the southwestern population. This two-population split is a genuine range fact, not a regulatory artifact -- the two areas are separated by roughly 100 miles of cropland with no birds documented between them.