Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Threatened Species Status for Mount Rainier White-Tailed Ptarmigan 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-R1-ES-2020-0076; FXES1111090FEDR-245-FF09E21000]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BE71</RIN> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Threatened Species Status for Mount Rainier White-Tailed Ptarmigan 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 for the Mount Rainier white-tailed ptarmigan ( <E T="03">Lagopus leucura rainierensis</E> ), a bird subspecies in Washington, under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended (Act). This rule adds the subspecies to the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and extends the Act's protections to the subspecies. We also finalize a rule under the authority of section 4(d) of the Act that provides measures that are necessary and advisable to provide for the conservation of the Mount Rainier white-tailed ptarmigan. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective August 2, 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-2020-0076 and at <E T="03">https://www.fws.gov/office/washington-fish-and-wildlife.</E> Comments and materials we received are available for public inspection at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FWS-R1-ES-2020-0076. Supporting materials we used in preparing this rule, such as the species status assessment report, are also available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FWS-R1-ES-2020-0076. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Brad Thompson, State Supervisor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington Fish and Wildlife Office, 510 Desmond Drive, Suite 102, Lacey, WA 98503; telephone 360-753-9440. 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 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 Mount Rainier white-tailed ptarmigan meets the Act's definition of a threatened species; therefore, we are listing the Mount Rainier white-tailed ptarmigan as a threatened species. Listing a species as an endangered species 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 makes final the listing of the Mount Rainier white-tailed ptarmigan as a threatened species under the Act and adopts a rule under section 4(d) of the Act for the subspecies. <E T="03">The basis for our action.</E> Under the Act, we may determine that a species is an endangered species 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 have determined that the Mount Rainier white-tailed ptarmigan meets the definition of a threatened species due to habitat loss and degradation resulting from climate change within the foreseeable future. Rising temperatures associated with climate change are expected to have direct and rapid impacts on individual birds. Changing habitat conditions, such as loss of suitable alpine vegetation and reduced snow quality and quantity, are expected to cause populations to decline. This threat and responses are reasonably foreseeable because some are already evident in the range of the subspecies, and the best available information indicates that the effects of climate change will continue to alter the subspecies' habitat within the foreseeable future. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the Mount Rainier white-tailed ptarmigan will adapt to the changing climate by moving northward because alpine areas north of the subspecies' current range are expected to undergo similar impacts due to climate change and any potential connectivity to areas north of the current range is expected to decline. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Previous Federal Actions</HD> Please refer to the proposed listing rule (86 FR 31668; June 15, 2021) for a detailed description of previous Federal actions concerning the Mount Rainier white-tailed ptarmigan. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Peer Review</HD> A species status assessment (SSA) team prepared an SSA report for Mount Rainier white-tailed ptarmigan. The SSA report represents a compilation of the best scientific and commercial data available concerning the status of the subspecies, including the impacts of past, present, and future factors (both negative and beneficial) affecting the subspecies. 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 draft SSA report. We sent the draft SSA report to seven independent peer reviewers including scientists with expertise in white-tailed ptarmigan as well as climate science; we received three responses. The peer reviews and the draft SSA report they commented on can be found at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> We also sent the draft SSA report to three agency partners for review; we received comments from one agency—the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. We incorporated the results of these reviews, as appropriate, into the 2021 SSA report (version 1.0, USFWS 2021, entire), which was the foundation for the proposed rule and this final rule. Additionally, new information provided to us during the public comment period on the proposed rule was incorporated into both the final rule as well as version 2.0 of the SSA report (USFWS 2023, entire). A summary of the peer review comments and our responses can be found 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 and new information received from the public on the June 15, 2021, proposed rule. This final rule does not make any substantive changes to the determinations made in the proposed rule. We updated the SSA report to version 2.0 (USFWS 2023, entire), revising it based on all new information and comments received. The new information received from our agency partners and others on genetics, diet, habitat characteristics, adaptive divergence, and range and distribution was incorporated into version 2 of the SSA but not incorporated into this final rule because it did not lead to substantive changes in the determinations made in the proposed rule. The changes we made to this final rule are as follows: (1) We shorten the Background section to a condensed discussion of the general information for the subspecies on taxonomy/genetics, species description, range/distribution, life history, and habitat (for the full updated discussion on these topics see version 2 the SSA Report (USFWS 2023)); (2) We shorten the Summary of Biological Status and Threats section to include only a brief discussion of recreation and the full discussion of the effects of climate change (for the full updated discussion on factors influencing the status of the subspecies see version 2 the SSA Report (USFWS 2023)); (3) We make many clarifications and minor corrections in this rule to ensure better consistency with the updated SSA report (USFWS 2023), we clarify some information, and we update or add new references. (4) We remove language referencing low connectivity between populations from this final rule. (5) We revise table 6 in the final rule (and table 17 the SSA (USFWS 2023, p. 81) by correcting the following: • We adjust the future condition score under Scenario 4 for the North Cascades-West Population Unit to poor, to be consistent with that unit's Scenario 2 score. Under both scenarios, we predict a lack of future availability of breeding and post-breeding habitat (USFWS 2023, chapter 6.0). • We adjust the future condition scores for Mount Adams under Scenarios 1 and 3 from good to fair, to better reflect predicted future conditions for Mount Adams, as explained in the SSA report (version 2.0, USFWS 2023, chapter 6.0). (6) In light of the April 5, 2024, regulation revisions to 50 CFR 424.12, that pertain to circumstances when a designation of critical habitat may be not prudent, we indicate we will reevaluate the prudency analysis for the ptarmigan and issue a critical habitat de ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 152k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━