Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Designation of Critical Habitat for Barrens Topminnow

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-R4-ES-2023-0224; FXES1111090FEDR-245-FF09E21000]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BE32</RIN> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Designation of Critical Habitat for Barrens Topminnow</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Fish and Wildlife Service, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service), propose to designate critical habitat for the Barrens topminnow ( <E T="03">Fundulus julisia</E> ) under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended (Act). In total, approximately 1.5 acres (0.6 hectares) of spring pool and 11.4 miles (18.3 kilometers) of spring run in Cannon, Coffee, Dekalb, Franklin, Grundy, and Warren Counties, Tennessee, fall within the boundaries of the proposed critical habitat designation. We also announce the availability of an economic analysis of the proposed designation of critical habitat for the Barrens topminnow. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We will accept comments received or postmarked on or before September 9, 2024. Comments submitted electronically using the Federal eRulemaking Portal (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> , below) must be received by 11:59 p.m. eastern time on the closing date. We must receive requests for a public hearing, in writing, at the address shown in <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> by August 23, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Written comments:</E> You may submit comments by one of the following methods: (1) <E T="03">Electronically:</E> Go to the Federal eRulemaking Portal: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> In the Search box, enter FWS-R4-ES-2023-0224, which is the docket number for this rulemaking. Then, click on the Search button. On the resulting page, in the panel on the left side of the screen, under the Document Type heading, click on the Proposed Rule box to locate this document. You may submit a comment by clicking on “Comment.” (2) <E T="03">By hard copy:</E> Submit by U.S. mail to: Public Comments Processing, Attn: FWS-R4-ES-2023-0224, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, MS: PRB/3W, 5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22041-3803. We request that you send comments only by the methods described above. We will post all comments on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> This generally means that we will post any personal information you provide us (see Information Requested, below, for more information). <E T="03">Availability of supporting materials:</E> 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.fws.gov/office/tennessee-ecological-services</E> and at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FWS-R4-ES-2023-0224. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Daniel Elbert, Field Supervisor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Tennessee Ecological Services Office, 446 Neal Street, Cookeville, TN 38501; telephone 931-528-6481. 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. Please see Docket No. FWS-R4-ES-2023-0224 on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> for a document that summarizes this proposed rule. </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> 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 under the Act. Designation of critical habitat can only be completed 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> We propose the designation of critical habitat for the Barrens topminnow. The Barrens topminnow was listed as an endangered species under the Act on November 20, 2019 (see 84 FR 56131; October 21, 2019). <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 we must, to the maximum extent prudent and determinable, designate critical habitat. 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 of the Interior (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. Section 4(a)(3) of the Act and implementing regulations (50 CFR 424.12) require that we designate critical habitat at the time a species is determined to be an endangered or threatened species, to the maximum extent prudent and determinable. On January 4, 2018, the Service published a proposed rule to list the Barrens topminnow as an endangered species under the Act (83 FR 490). At the time of the proposed listing rule, the Service found that critical habitat was prudent but could not be determined until a careful assessment of the economic impacts that may occur due to a critical habitat designation was completed. The final listing rule (84 FR 56131; October 21, 2019) affirmed that the designation of critical habitat was prudent but not determinable because specific information needed to analyze the impacts of designation was lacking. In accordance with section 4(b)(2) of the Act and our implementing regulations at 50 CFR 424.19, we prepared an analysis of the economic impacts of the proposed critical habitat designation. In this proposed rule, we announce the availability of the draft economic analysis for public review and comment. <HD SOURCE="HD2">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 sought the expert opinions of appropriate specialists regarding our 2017 species status assessment (SSA) report (Service 2017, entire), which informed this proposed rule. In addition to the peer review conducted on the 2017 SSA report, we are seeking comments from independent specialists during the public comment period on this proposed rule (see <E T="02">DATES</E> , above). The purpose of peer review is to ensure that our designation is based on scientifically sound data, assumptions, and analyses. The peer reviewers have expertise in fish biology, habitat, and stressors or factors negatively affecting the species. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Information Requested</HD> We intend that any final action resulting from this proposed rule will be based on the best scientific data available and be as accurate and as effective as possible. Therefore, we request comments or information from other governmental agencies, Native American Tribes, the scientific community, industry, or any other interested parties concerning this proposed rule. We particularly seek comments concerning: (1) Historical and current range, including distribution patterns and the locations of any additional populations of Barrens topminnow. (2) Specific information on: (a) The amount and distribution of Barrens topminnow habitat; (b) Any additional areas occurring within the range of the species, <E T="03">i.e.,</E> Cannon, Coffee, Dekalb, Franklin, Grundy, and Warren Counties, Tennessee, that should be included in the designation because they (i) are occupied at the time of listing and contain the physical or biological features that are essential to the conservation of the species and that may require special management considerations or protection, or (ii) are unoccupied at the time of listing and are essential for the conservation of the species; (c) Special management considerations or protection that may be needed in critical habitat areas we are proposing, including managing for the potential effects of climate change; and (d) Whether areas not occupied at the time of listing qualify as habitat for the species and are essential for the conservation of the species. (3) Land use designations and current or planned activities in the subject areas and their possible impacts on proposed critical habitat. (4) Any probable economic, national security, or other relevant impacts of designating any area that may be included in the final designation, and the related benefits of including or excluding specific areas. (5) Information on the extent to which the description of probable economic impacts in the draft economic analysis is a reasonable estimate of the likely economic impacts. (6) Whether any specific areas we are proposing for critical habitat designation should be considered for exc ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 107k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━