Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Designation of Critical Habitat for 12 Species on Hawai`i Island

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-R1-ES-2023-0017; FXES1111090FEDR-245-FF09E21000]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BG65</RIN> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Designation of Critical Habitat for 12 Species on Hawai`i Island</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Fish and Wildlife Service, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service), designate critical habitat for 12 federally endangered species on the island of Hawai`i under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Act), as amended. In total, approximately 119,326 acres (48,289 hectares) on the island of Hawai`i, in the State of Hawaii, fall within the boundaries of the critical habitat designation. This rule extends the Act's protections to these species' designated critical habitats. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective April 11, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> This final rule is available on the internet at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FWS-R1-ES-2023-0017 and at <E T="03">https://www.fws.gov/project/critical-habitat-hawaii-island-species</E> . Comments and materials we received are available for public inspection at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov under</E> Docket No. FWS-R1-ES-2023-0017. <E T="03">Availability of supporting materials:</E> Supporting materials we used in preparing this rule, such as the draft recovery plan, 5-year status reviews, and other materials relating to this critical habitat designation, including coordinates or plot points or both from which the maps are generated, are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FWS-R1-ES-2023-0017. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Earl Campbell, Project Leader, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Pacific Islands Fish and Wildlife Office, 300 Ala Moana Boulevard Room 3-122, Honolulu, HI 96850; telephone 808-792-9400. Individuals in the United States who are deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability may dial 711 (TTY, TDD, or TeleBraille) to access telecommunications relay services. Individuals outside the United States should use the relay services offered within their country to make international calls to the point-of-contact in the United States. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Executive Summary</HD> <E T="03">Why we need to publish a rule.</E> Under the Act (16 U.S.C. 1531 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), to the maximum extent prudent and determinable, we must designate critical habitat for any species that we determine to be an endangered or threatened species. Making a critical habitat determination can be completed only by issuing a rule through the Administrative Procedure Act rulemaking process (5 U.S.C. 551 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). <E T="03">What this document does. This rule designates approximately</E> 119,326 <E T="03">acres (ac) (</E> 48,289 <E T="03">hectares (ha)) as critical habitat for 12 federally endangered species (11 plants, 1 insect) on the island of Hawai'i in the State of Hawai`i.</E> <E T="03">The basis for our action.</E> Under section 4(a)(3) of the Act, if we determine that a species is an endangered or threatened species, the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary) must designate critical habitat to the maximum extent prudent and determinable. Section 3(5)(A) of the Act defines critical habitat as (i) the specific areas within the geographical area occupied by the species, at the time it is listed, on which are found those physical or biological features (I) essential to the conservation of the species and (II) which may require special management considerations or protection; and (ii) specific areas outside the geographical area occupied by the species at the time it is listed, upon a determination by the Secretary that such areas are essential for the conservation of the species. Section 4(b)(2) of the Act states that the Secretary must make the designation on the basis of the best scientific data available and after taking into consideration the economic impact, the impact on national security, and any other relevant impacts of specifying any particular area as critical habitat. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Previous Federal Actions</HD> Please refer to the proposed and final listing rules (77 FR 63928, October 17, 2012; 78 FR 64638, October 29, 2013) and proposed critical habitat rule (88 FR 18756, March 29, 2023) for a detailed description of previous Federal actions concerning the species addressed in this final rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Peer Review</HD> In accordance with our joint policy on peer review published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on July 1, 1994 (59 FR 34270), and our August 22, 2016, memorandum updating and clarifying the role of peer review of listing actions under the Act, we solicited independent scientific review of the information contained in the proposed critical habitat rule (88 FR 18756, March 29, 2023). We sent the proposed rule to five independent peer reviewers and received three separate peer reviewer responses. The peer reviews can be found at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> We incorporated the results of these reviews, as appropriate, into this final rule. A summary of the peer review comments and our responses can be found under Summary of Comments and Recommendations, below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Changes From the Proposed Rule</HD> After considering the comments we received during the public comment period on our March 29, 2023, proposed rule to designate critical habitat for the 12 federally endangered species on the island of Hawai'i (88 FR 18756) and relevant information that became available since the proposed rule published, we made changes to this final critical habitat rule. No changes were required for our economic analysis after considering public comments; thus, we finalized the economic analysis of the designation. We made many small, nonsubstantive changes and corrections throughout this document that do not affect the designation ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> updating the Background discussion in this rule's preamble in response to comments, and making other minor clarifications). Below is a summary of changes made in this final rule; please note that an explanation of plant sections and their correlation to designated critical habitat units for the plants that are the subjects of this rule is provided under Final Critical Habitat Designation, below. (1) We make minor clarifications and elaborate on our rationale for concluding in our proposed rule (88 FR 18756, March 29, 2023) that the designation of critical habitat is not prudent at this time for <E T="03">Pritchardia lanigera</E> (loulu) and <E T="03">Vetericaris chaceorum</E> (anchialine pool shrimp). (2) We correct the range information for <E T="03">Cyrtandra wagneri</E> to include only the Mauna Kea region, resulting in the removal of all unoccupied critical habitat units for this species. Specifically, this designation does not include critical habitat for <E T="03">C. wagneri</E> that we proposed in units 23, 24 (Sections 8 and 9), 28, 29, 30, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, and 51. The critical habitat we are designating for <E T="03">C. wagneri</E> in this rule includes only two occupied units: units 3 and 52 in Section 1. This is a decrease of approximately 72,469 ac (29,328 ha) from the critical habitat we proposed for <E T="03">C. wagneri</E> on March 29, 2023 (88 FR 18756). However, because all of the unoccupied critical habitat units that we proposed for <E T="03">C. wagneri</E> are also occupied by other plants for which we are designating critical habitat in this rule, not designating these units for <E T="03">C. wagneri</E> does not change the total area designated as critical habitat in this rule. (3) We remove the proposed <E T="03">Drosophila digressa</E> —Unit 6 from this final designation; however, this same area was proposed, and remains in this final rule, as designated critical habitat for <E T="03">Cyanea marksii, Phyllostegia floribunda,</E> <E T="03">Pittosporum hawaiiense, Schiedea diffusa</E> ssp. <E T="03">macraei, Stenogyne cranwelliae</E> in Section 6, units 16 and 40. (4) We revise the critical habitat designation to add a new unit for <E T="03">Drosophila digressa</E> (a new <E T="03">Drosophila digressa</E> —Unit 6), based on new information we received in peer review comments regarding recent surveys in South Kona. Within the same boundaries of the new <E T="03">Drosophila digressa</E> —Unit 6, we created a new plant Section 20 that contains Unit 56 for <E T="03">Cyanea marksii</E> and <E T="03">Schiedea diffusa</E> ssp. <E T="03">macraei.</E> The new unit ( <E T="03">Drosophila digressa</E> —Unit 6, and Unit 56 for <E T="03">Cyanea marksii</E> and <E T="03">Schiedea diffusa</E> ssp. <E T="03">macraei</E> ) results in an increase of 224 ac (91 ha) of delineated critical habitat from the areas we proposed. (5) Pursuant to section 4(b)(2) of the Act (16 U.S.C. 1533(b)), in this final designation, we exclude lands in 12 areas in 7 units owned by the following entities: the Kamehameha Schools; Parker Ranch Waipunalei, LLC; Parker Ranch Waiemi, LLC; State Department of Hawaiian Home Lands; Laupāhoehoe Nui; Kahua Ranch; and Queen Emma Foundation. This amounts to a decrease of approximately 3,172 ac (1,284 ha) from the critical habitat areas we proposed. (6) We do not exclude The Nature Conservancy's land in Section 13 (Unit 41 for <E T="03">Cyanea tritomantha, Phyllostegia floribunda,</E> <E T="03">Pittosporum hawaiiense, Schiede ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 471k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━