Common Ground

Some of the best-preserved native prairie left in America isn't in a park. It's a working cattle ranch. Stacy Hoeme's land in western Kansas looks like the southern Great Plains did generations ago: native, never-plowed grass rolling to the horizon, and it's teeming with wildlife, from one of the densest lesser prairie chicken populations anywhere to mule deer, whitetail, and pheasant. The way the...

This is the episode where 250 for 250 was named. Adam Riggsbee, Wayne Walker, and John Preyer sat down in Kansas — at the Hoeme family's working ranch — and laid out the case for a federal procurement model that could permanently protect 250,000 acres of native prairie habitat by America's 250th birthday. Over an hour, they explain the Grand Bargain: a single conservation deal that gives ranchers...

Ted Koch spent 30 years inside the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service deciding which species got listed and which didn't. Today he runs the North American Grouse Partnership and helped stand up the Lesser Prairie Chicken Landowner Alliance — a group of ranchers who don't want subsidies, don't want cost-shares, and don't want another well-intentioned federal program. They want fair market value for stewa...

In this episode, Adam and LPC Conservation Partner John "JP" Preyer break down their groundbreaking "250 for 250" initiative — 250,000 acres of permanent lesser prairie chicken habitat conservation on working ranches by America's 250th birthday. They explain how to use already-appropriated USDA dollars through the Sustains Act, NRCS programs (CRP, ACEP, etc.), and corporate matching funds to creat...

The lesser prairie chicken has fewer than 28,000 individuals left and has been caught in a regulatory loop since 1998 — listed, delisted, listed again, and delisted again. In Episode 2 of Finding Common Ground, Wayne Walker and Adam Riggsbee make the case for why the credit market alone will never get the bird to recovery, and what a different path forward looks like. Wayne opens with the American...

Welcome to, "Finding Common Ground" the official Lesser Prairie Chicken Conservation Podcast! As the Lesser Prairie-Chicken was officially delisted from the ESA again in early 2026, the Colorado Power Pathway’s massive transmission buildout is accelerating across the southern Great Plains, yet habitat loss and fragmentation continue to threaten the bird, rural landowners, and energy projects. In t...