Alva Review-Courier -

HUTCHINSON, Kan. (AP) — The booming calls of the lesser prairie chicken once rung out across western Kansas.

Accounts from the 1800s mention bands of hunters bagging dozens of birds each. Railways advertised special trains that brought sportsmen to shoot the birds in the Texas panhandle, complete with ice cars to preserve the meat on the ride home.

Then, over a century of plowing prairies into farmland decimated the birds. More recently, droughts brought their numbers to a recorded low in 2013.

Today, the birds aren't listed as endangered, but they're considered a conservation-dependent specie...