Finding Common Ground

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 burying beetle — a species with a nearly identical history of failed in-lieu fee programs, until Fish and Wildlife shut the old program down in 2012, private conservation banking stepped in, and the market delivered conservation that actually worked. The beetle was downlisted from endangered to threatened. The playbook exists. From there, the conversation moves to what Wayne and Adam call the 250 for 250: a proposed federal procurement of 250,000 recovery acres timed to America's 250th anniversary. The mechanism is their USFWS-approved programmatic conservation banking agreement — the only instrument of its kind for this species. Every acre includes a permanent conservation easement, a long-term management plan, and a non-wasting endowment. The rancher sets the price. Cattle keep grazing. The ranch stays in the family. The payoff for the broader economy: permitting certainty for the Colorado Power Pathway, Permian Basin development, and every energy project across the southern Great Plains — without the multi-year ESA permitting cycle that a listing would bring. Topics covered: the beetle precedent, conservation strongholds and why they require 25,000 to 50,000 contiguous acres, the Trump administration's listing deadline of November 2026, IRA fund repurposing, the Kansas-Colorado connection, and why conservation banking is a procurement model, not a subsidy. *Note: This episode was recorded before Colorado's LPC conservation legislation was introduced and subsequently did not advance in the state appropriations process. The grand bargain argument in this episode addresses exactly why state-level approaches alone are structurally insufficient and why the federal procurement model matters.* TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 Introduction — why mitigation alone won't get to recovery 03:54 The American burying beetle precedent 09:37 Why the LPC needs a surge in conservation 11:52 What a stronghold is and where they need to be 15:03 The grand bargain — funding the stronghold strategy 18:48 The Trump administration, the listing deadline, and IRA funds 28:26 Government procurement vs. the farm bill model 38:20 Colorado, Kansas, and the 250 for 250 45:33 Closing — 250,000 acres for America's 250th anniversary Finding Common Ground is hosted by Wayne Walker and Adam Riggsbee, co-founders of the only USFWS-approved programmatic conservation banking agreement for the lesser prairie chicken. 🎧 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finding-common-ground/id1891100748 🎧 Subscribe on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/78OmhzYh89K58FGb5aqMj7 📺 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lpcconservation

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 this opening conversation, CEO of LPCC Adam Riggsbee, and Wayne Walker of Common Ground Capital recap decades of regulatory swings, the real tensions between ranchers and developers, and why past government and industry programs failed to deliver durable results. They lay out how Lesser Prairie Chicken Conservation operates the only programmatic conservation bank and range-wide Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for the species across its full range! Through permanent, market-negotiated conservation easements on working grasslands, ranchers receive fair-market payments backed by endowments and active management, prescribed fire, grazing plans, invasives control, and all to strict U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service standards. Wind, solar, transmission, and oil & gas developers buy mitigation credits for compliance certainty. Key Takeaways • Regulatory uncertainty destroys value for everyone. “Uncertainty is bad for all, whether you’re a farmer or rancher…or an energy developer.” • You can’t make the money fit the mitigation. Market-based payments to landowners in the right places are the missing piece. • Location, location, location. Strategic easements create habitat strongholds of 50,000+ acres while keeping productive working lands intact. • Private market environmental solutions deliver. Ranchers earn meaningful revenue to stay on the land; developers get bankable credits and permitting certainty. Utilities, developers, and capital allocators gain scalable, regulatory-compliant tools for projects like the Colorado Power Pathway. Multi-generational ranchers gain real economic incentives for stewardship of their private property without giving up operations. LPCC's conservation banking model shows how private-market solutions bridge rancher economics, developer needs, and habitat restoration. LPCC Podcast Episode 1 with Adam Riggsbee and Wayne Walker. Subscribe for future episodes on pragmatic conservation finance and working-land solutions. Visit: lpcconservation.com to learn more.