Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Designation of Critical Habitat for the Coastal Distinct Population Segment of the Pacific Marten

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-R8-ES-2020-0151; FXES1111090FEDR-245-FF09E21000]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BE33</RIN> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Designation of Critical Habitat for the Coastal Distinct Population Segment of the Pacific Marten</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 the coastal distinct population segment of Pacific marten (coastal marten) ( <E T="03">Martes caurina</E> ), a mammal species from coastal California and Oregon, under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Act), as amended. In total, approximately 1,213,752 acres (491,188 hectares) in northwestern California and southwestern Oregon fall within the boundaries of the critical habitat designation. This rule extends the Act's protections to this entity's designated critical habitat. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective June 28, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> This final rule is available on the internet at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Comments and materials we received are available for public inspection at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R8-ES-2020-0151. <E T="03">Availability of supporting materials:</E> Supporting materials we used in preparing this rule, such as the species status assessment report, are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R8-ES-2020-0151. For the critical habitat designation, the coordinates or plot points or both from which the maps are generated are included in the decision file for this critical habitat designation and are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R8-ES-2020-0151 and on the Service's website at <E T="03">https://www.fws.gov/office/arcata-fish-and-wildlife.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Vicky Ryan, Acting Field Supervisor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Arcata Fish and Wildlife Office, 1655 Heindon Road, Arcata, CA 95521; telephone 707-822-7201. 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. On October 8, 2020, we published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (85 FR 63806) a final rule listing the coastal marten distinct population segment (DPS) as threatened, and on October 25, 2021, we published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (86 FR 58831) a proposed rule to designate critical habitat for the DPS. Designating critical habitat 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.</E> This is a final rule to designate critical habitat for the coastal marten in five units totaling approximately 1,213,752 acres (ac) (491,188 hectares (ha)) in the States of Oregon and California. <E T="03">The basis for our action.</E> Section 4(a)(3) of the Act requires the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary), to the maximum extent prudent and determinable, concurrently with listing designate critical habitat for the species. 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 protections; 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 rule to list the coastal marten DPS (83 FR 50574; October 9, 2018), the final rule to list the DPS (85 FR 63806; October 8, 2020), the proposed rule to designate critical habitat for the DPS (86 FR 58831; October 25, 2021), and the document describing revisions to and reopening the comment period on the October 25, 2021, proposed rule (87 FR 59384; September 30, 2022) for detailed descriptions of the previous Federal actions concerning this DPS. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Peer Review</HD> A species status assessment (SSA) team prepared a revised SSA report for the coastal marten (Service 2023, entire) based on both peer review and public comments. The SSA team was composed of Service biologists, in consultation with other species experts. The 2023 SSA report represents a compilation of the best scientific and commercial data available concerning the status of the species, including the impacts of past, present, and future factors (both negative and beneficial) affecting the species and incorporates the results of peer review, public and agency comments, and new information that has become available since our proposed critical habitat rule was published on October 25, 2021 (86 FR 58831). The 2023 SSA report also identifies habitat needs and requirements for the coastal marten. We used information in the 2019 and 2023 SSA reports to inform our development of the physical or biological features as well as our criteria for determining and designating critical habitat for the coastal marten. The 2019 and 2023 SSA reports (Service 2019 and Service 2023) are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R8-ES-2020-0151. 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 and recovery actions under the Act, we solicited independent scientific review of the information contained in the draft coastal marten SSA report (Service 2019, entire). As discussed in the final listing rule (85 FR 63806; October 8, 2020) and the proposed critical habitat rule (86 FR 58831; October 25, 2021), we sent the 2019 SSA report to eight independent peer reviewers and received two responses. The peer reviews can be found at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov at</E> Docket No. FWS-R8-ES-2020-0151. Regarding comments applicable to this designation of critical habitat, we incorporated the comments which specifically addressed our characterization of coastal marten habitat and the DPS's use of habitat, as appropriate, into the current SSA report (Service 2023, entire) and into this critical habitat designation. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Changes From the Proposed Rule</HD> Our proposed critical habitat rule (86 FR 58831; October 25, 2021), contained an error in the acreage identified for Unit 1. The proposed rule identified 94,094 ac (37,673 ha) of Federal lands in Unit 1. The actual acreage of Federal land proposed for Unit 1 should have been 93,091 ac (37,673 ha). The acreages discussed for Unit 1 in this rule reflect this correction. In addition, in preparing this final rule, we reviewed and fully considered the comments we received during the comment periods on our October 25, 2021, proposed rule (86 FR 58831) and our September 30, 2022, document describing revisions to and reopening the comment period on the October 25, 2021, proposed rule (87 FR 59384). In general, the changes from the proposed rule to this final rule fall into two main categories—the finalization of section 4(b)(2) exclusions and changes (additions and removals) to areas that are based on our consideration of comments and new information we received from land managers and updated land ownership information. These are described below as changes resulting from exclusions and from land manager comments. This final rule also reflects minor nonsubstantive changes (such as clarifications on habitat use) that were made to the SSA report (Service 2023, version 2.2, entire). <HD SOURCE="HD2">Changes as a Result of Exclusions Under Section 4(b)(2) of the Act</HD> As identified in our October 25, 2021 (86 FR 58831), and September 30, 2022 (87 FR 59384), publications, we identified the Green Diamond Resource Company (GDRC) lands and the Yurok Tribal lands (trust lands, fee title lands, and reservation boundary adjustment lands) as being considered for exclusion under section 4(b)(2) of the Act from Unit 5 in California. Subsequent to the publication of our October 25, 2021, proposed rule, we received comments and information from both GDRC and the Yurok Tribe requesting that we exclude their lands from the critical habitat designation for the coastal marten DPS. We have finalized our exclusion analyses and are excluding approximately 49,010 ac (19,834 ha) of GDRC lands, which includes approximately 9,754 ac (3,947 ha) o ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 266k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━