Bianca Sicich isn’t ready to let go of the prairie just yet. It’s the last Friday of February, the first green shoots of spring emerging from the overwintering tall grass, and she’s up early to volunteer at the Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge, a 10,500-acre preserve sixty miles west of Houston. This morning, she’s literally counting chickens. She’s helping conduct the annual population survey of the Attwater’s prairie chicken, an extremely endangered species. At last count, there were only 180 of these birds left in the wild, about 40 of which live at the refuge. The counting happens during mating season, when the males gather in “leks”—areas of shorter grass with high visibility—to perform their mating rituals. The bird spotters look for these leks,…