Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Threatened Status for the Suwannee Alligator Snapping Turtle with a Section 4(d) Rule

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-R4-ES-2021-0007; FXES1111090FEDR-245-FF09E21000]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BE80</RIN> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Threatened Status for the Suwannee Alligator Snapping Turtle with a Section 4(d) Rule</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 threatened species status under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Act), as amended, for the Suwannee alligator snapping turtle ( <E T="03">Macrochelids suwanniensis</E> ), a large, freshwater turtle species from the Suwannee River basin in Florida and Georgia. This rule adds the species to the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife. We also finalize a rule issued under the authority of section 4(d) of the Act that provides measures that are necessary and advisable to provide for the conservation of this species. We have determined that designating critical habitat for the Suwannee alligator snapping turtle is not prudent. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective July 29, 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-R4-ES-2021-0007 and on the Service's Environmental Conservation Online System (ECOS) species page at <E T="03">https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp/species/10891.</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> under Docket No. FWS-R4-ES-2021-0007. <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-R4-ES-2021-0007. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Lourdes Mena, Classification and Recovery Division Manager, Florida Ecological Services Field Office, 7915 Baymeadows Way, Suite 200, Jacksonville, FL 32256-7517; email: <E T="03">Lourdes_Mena@fws.gov;</E> telephone: 352-749-2462. Individuals in the United States who are deaf, deafblind, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability may dial 711 (TTY, TDD, or Tele Braille) 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 an endangered species 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 Suwannee alligator snapping turtle meets the Act's definition of a threatened species; therefore, we are listing it as such. Listing a species as an endangered or threatened species 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 lists the Suwannee alligator snapping turtle ( <E T="03">Macrochelys suwanniensis</E> ) as a threatened species and finalizes the rule issued under the authority of section 4(d) of the Act (the “4(d) rule”) that provides measures that are necessary and advisable to provide for the conservation of this species. <E T="03">The basis for our action.</E> Under the Act, we may determine that a species is an endangered or threatened species based on 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 have determined that the primary threats acting on the Suwannee alligator snapping turtle include illegal harvest and collection (Factor B), nest predation (Factor C), and hook ingestion and entanglement due to bycatch associated with freshwater fishing (Factor E). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Previous Federal Actions</HD> Please refer to the April 7, 2021, proposed rule (86 FR 18014) for a detailed description of previous Federal actions concerning the Suwannee alligator snapping turtle. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Peer Review</HD> A species status assessment (SSA) team prepared an SSA report, version 1.0, for the Suwannee alligator snapping turtle (Service 2020, entire). 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 sought peer review of the SSA report version 1.0 (Service 2020, entire). As discussed in the proposed rule, we sent the SSA report to four independent peer reviewers and received responses from one reviewer. The peer review can be viewed at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and at our Florida Ecological Services Field Office (see <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> ). In preparing the proposed rule, we incorporated the results of this review, as appropriate, into 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 in in the Summary of Comments and Recommendations below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Changes From the Proposed Rule</HD> In preparing this final rule, we reviewed and fully considered comments we received on our April 7, 2021, proposed rule to list the Suwannee alligator snapping turtle as a threatened species with a 4(d) rule. We updated the Suwannee alligator snapping turtle SSA report (to version 1.2 (Service 2022, entire) based on comments and additional information provided during the proposed rule's comment period. Those updates are reflected in this final rule, as follows: 1. We update the description of the species' representation and redundancy and clarify these conservation principles to provide a better understanding of the species' current and future viability. 2. We include new information provided during the comment period regarding the effectiveness of best management practices (BMPs) associated with forest management practices. We added a discussion on ways in which the implementation of such BMPs provides conservation benefits to the species. 3. For the 4(d) rule, we are not including the exception from prohibitions associated with Federal and State captive-breeding programs to support conservation efforts for wild populations. We determined this provision is redundant with the exception under 50 CFR 17.31(b), which is already included in the 4(d) rule. 4. For the 4(d) rule, we are not including the exception from the prohibitions regarding incidental take resulting from herbicide/pesticide use from this final rule. We do not have enough information about the types or amounts of pesticides that may be applied in areas where Suwannee alligator snapping turtle occurs to be able assess the future impacts to the species. The additional materials provided during the public comment period indicate impacts to other turtle species from pesticide use occurs (Bishop et al. 1991, entire; Sparling et al. 2006, entire; Kittle et al. 2018, entire). Therefore, including this exception to incidental take may not provide for the conservation of the species. Further, we note that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not consulted on most pesticide registrations to date, so excepting take solely based on user compliance with label directions and State and local regulations EPA has not consulted on most pesticide registrations to date and is not appropriate in this situation. Retaining this exception in the absence of consultation on a specific pesticide registration may create confusion regarding the consideration of these impacts and whether Federal regulatory processes apply to these activities. It was not our intent to supersede the consultation on the pesticide registration nor other Federal activities. 5. For the 4(d) rule, we revise the text of the exception from incidental take prohibition resulting from forestry management practices. We remove the terms “silviculture and silvicultural practices” and replace them with “forest management practices” to clarify the exception to incidental take prohibitions, as this is more appropriate for the intent and purpose of the rule. 6. For the 4(d) rule, we are not including the exception from incidental take prohibition resulting from construction, operation, and maintenance activities that occur near and in a stream. We determined this exception is too vague to meaningful ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 166k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━