Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Endangered Species Status With Critical Habitat for Guadalupe Fatmucket, Texas Fatmucket, Guadalupe Orb, Texas Pimpleback, Balcones Spike, and False Spike, and Threatened Species Status With Section 4(d) Rule and Critical Habitat for Texas Fawnsfoot

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-R2-ES-2019-0061; FXES1111090FEDR-245-FF09E21000]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BD16</RIN> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Endangered Species Status With Critical Habitat for Guadalupe Fatmucket, Texas Fatmucket, Guadalupe Orb, Texas Pimpleback, Balcones Spike, and False Spike, and Threatened Species Status With Section 4(d) Rule and Critical Habitat for Texas Fawnsfoot</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), determine endangered species status under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Act), as amended, for the Guadalupe fatmucket ( <E T="03">Lampsilis bergmanni</E> ), Texas fatmucket ( <E T="03">Lampsilis bracteata</E> ), Guadalupe orb ( <E T="03">Cyclonaias necki</E> ), Texas pimpleback ( <E T="03">Cyclonaias</E> (= <E T="03">Quadrula</E> ) <E T="03">petrina</E> ), Balcones spike ( <E T="03">Fusconaia</E> (= <E T="03">Quincuncina</E> ) <E T="03">iheringi</E> ), and false spike ( <E T="03">Fusconaia</E> ), and threatened species status for the Texas fawnsfoot ( <E T="03">Truncilla macrodon</E> ), seven species of freshwater mussels from central Texas. We also issue a rule under section 4(d) of the Act for the Texas fawnsfoot that provides measures that are necessary and advisable to provide for the conservation of the Texas fawnsfoot. In addition, we designate critical habitat for all seven species. In total, approximately 1,577.5 river miles (2,538.7 river kilometers) in Blanco, Brown, Caldwell, Coleman, Comal, Concho, DeWitt, Gillespie, Gonzales, Guadalupe, Hays, Kendall, Kerr, Kimble, Lampasas, Llano, Mason, McCulloch, Menard, Mills, Palo Pinto, Parker, Runnels, San Saba, Shackelford, Stephens, Sutton, Throckmorton, Tom Green, Travis, and Victoria Counties, Texas, fall within the boundaries of the critical habitat designation. This rule applies the protections of the Act to these species and their designated critical habitats. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective July 5, 2024. </DATES> <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, as well as supporting documentation we used in preparing this rule, are available for public inspection at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R2-ES-2019-0061. <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 for public inspection at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R2-ES-2019-0061. For the critical habitat designation, the coordinates or plot points or both from which the maps are generated are included in the decision file and are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R2-ES-2019-0061. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Karen Myers, Field Supervisor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Austin Ecological Services Field Office, 1505 Ferguson Lane, Austin, TX 78754; telephone (512) 937-7371. 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, a species warrants listing if it meets the definition of an endangered species (in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range) or a threatened species (likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range). If we determine that a species warrants listing, we must list the species promptly and designate the species' critical habitat to the maximum extent prudent and determinable. We have determined that the Guadalupe fatmucket ( <E T="03">Lampsilis bergmanni</E> ), Texas fatmucket ( <E T="03">Lampsilis bracteata</E> ), Guadalupe orb ( <E T="03">Cyclonaias necki</E> ), Texas pimpleback ( <E T="03">Cyclonaias</E> (= <E T="03">Quadrula</E> ) <E T="03">petrina</E> ), Balcones spike ( <E T="03">Fusconaia</E> (= <E T="03">Quincuncina</E> ) <E T="03">iheringi</E> ), and false spike ( <E T="03">Fusconaia</E> ) meet the Act's definition of endangered species, and the Texas fawnsfoot ( <E T="03">Truncilla macrodon</E> ) meets the Act's definition of a threatened species; therefore, we are listing them as such, finalizing a rule under section 4(d) of the Act for the Texas fawnsfoot, and designating critical habitat. Both listing a species as an endangered or threatened species and 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 rule makes final the listing of the Guadalupe fatmucket, Texas fatmucket, Guadalupe orb, Texas pimpleback, Balcones spike, and false spike as endangered species, and the Texas fawnsfoot as a threatened species with a rule issued under section 4(d) of the Act (a “4(d) rule”). In addition, this rule designates critical habitat for all seven central Texas mussel species in 20 units (including 32 subunits) totaling 1,577.5 river miles (2,538.7 river kilometers (km)) on private, State, and Federal property within portions of 31 counties in Texas. <E T="03">The basis for our action.</E> Under the Act, we may determine that a species is an endangered or threatened species because of any of five factors: (A) The present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of its habitat or range; (B) overutilization for commercial, recreational, scientific, or educational purposes; (C) disease or predation; (D) the inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms; or (E) other natural or manmade factors affecting its continued existence; we also take into account conservation efforts, such as Candidate Conservation Agreements with Assurances (CCAAs). We have determined that increased fine sediment, changes in water quality, and altered hydrology in the form of inundation and loss of flow and scour of substrate (Factor A), collection (Factor B), predation (Factor C), and barriers to fish movement (Factor E) are the primary threats to these species. These factors are all exacerbated by the ongoing and expected effects of climate change. Section 4(a)(3) of the Act requires the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary), to designate critical habitat, to the maximum extent prudent and determinable, concurrent with listing. 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 August 26, 2021, proposed rule (86 FR 47916) for a detailed description of previous Federal actions concerning these species. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Peer Review</HD> A species status assessment (SSA) team prepared an SSA report for the Guadalupe fatmucket, Texas fatmucket, Texas fawnsfoot, Guadalupe orb, Texas pimpleback, and false spike. This SSA report was competed prior to the taxonomic divergence of the false spike to reflect the recently described Balcones spike ( <E T="03">Fusconaia iheringi</E> ) (Smith et al. 2020, entire) (see Summary of Changes from the Proposed Rule, below). The SSA team was composed of Service biologists, in consultation with other species experts. The 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. 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 SSA report. We sent the SSA report to eight independent peer reviewers and received six responses. Results of this structured peer review process can be found at <E T="03">https://regulations.gov</E> . In preparing the proposed rule, we incorporated the results of these peer reviews, as appropriate, into version 1.1 of the SSA report, which was the foundation for the proposed rule and 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">S ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 507k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━