Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Removal of White Sedge (Carex albida) From the List of Endangered and Threatened Plants

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-R8-ES-2023-0088; FF09E22000 FXES1113090FEDR 245]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BG50</RIN> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Removal of White Sedge (Carex albida) From the List of Endangered and Threatened Plants</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 remove the white sedge ( <E T="03">Carex albida</E> ) from the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Plants ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> “delist” the species). Our review of the best available scientific and commercial data indicate that the white sedge is not a discrete taxonomic entity and does not meet the definition of a species as defined by the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended (Act). White sedge has been synonymized with Lemmon's sedge ( <E T="03">Carex lemmonii</E> ). This taxonomic revision means that the white sedge is no longer a scientifically accepted species. If we finalize this rule as proposed, the prohibitions and conservation measures provided by the Act, particularly through sections 7 and 9, would no longer apply to the white sedge. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We will accept comments received or postmarked on or before September 3, 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 public hearings, in writing, at the address shown in <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> by August 16, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> 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-R8-ES-2023-0088, which is the docket number for this rulemaking. Then, click on the Search button. On the resulting page, in the Search 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-R8-ES-2023-0088, 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> This proposed rule and supporting documents, including a copy of the 5-year review referenced throughout this document, are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FWS-R8-ES-2023-0088. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Michael Fris, Field Supervisor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Office, 2800 Cottage Way, Sacramento, CA 95825; telephone 916-414-6700. 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-R8-ES-2023-0088 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">Information Requested</HD> We intend that any final action resulting from this proposed rule will be based on the best scientific and commercial data available and be as accurate and as effective as possible. Therefore, we request comments or information from other concerned governmental agencies, Native American Tribes, the scientific community, industry, or any other interested parties concerning this proposed rule. We particularly seek comments concerning: (1) Reasons we should or should not remove the white sedge from the List of Endangered and Threatened Plants; and (2) Additional taxonomic or other relevant data concerning the white sedge. Please include sufficient information with your submission (such as scientific journal articles or other publications) to allow us to verify any scientific or commercial information you include. Please note that submissions merely stating support for, or opposition to, the action under consideration without providing supporting information, although noted, do not provide substantial information necessary to support a determination. Section 4(b)(1)(A) of the Act directs that determinations as to whether any species is an endangered species or a threatened species must be made solely on the basis of the best scientific and commercial data available. You may submit your comments and materials concerning this proposed rule by one of the methods listed in <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> . We request that you send comments only by the methods described in <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> . If you submit information via <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> your entire submission—including any personal identifying information—will be posted on the website. If your submission is made via a hardcopy that includes personal identifying information, you may request at the top of your document that we withhold this information from public review. However, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so. We will post all hardcopy submissions on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Comments and materials we receive, as well as supporting documentation we used in preparing this proposed rule, will be available for public inspection on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Our final determination may differ from this proposal because we will consider all comments we receive during the comment period as well as any information that may become available after this proposal. For example, based on the new information we receive (and, if relevant, any comments on that new information), we may conclude that the white sedge should remain listed as endangered. We will clearly explain our rationale and the basis for our final decision, including why we made changes, if any, that differ from this proposal. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Public Hearing</HD> Section 4(b)(5) of the Act provides for a public hearing on this proposal, if requested. Requests must be received by the date specified in <E T="02">DATES</E> . Such requests must be sent to the address shown in <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . We will schedule a public hearing on this proposal, if requested, and announce the date, time, and place of the hearing, as well as how to obtain reasonable accommodations, in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and local newspapers at least 15 days before the hearing. We may hold the public hearing in person or virtually via webinar. We will announce any public hearing on our website, in addition to the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . The use of these virtual public hearings is consistent with our regulation at 50 CFR 424.16(c)(3). <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 and recovery actions under the Act, we will seek independent scientific reviews from at least three appropriate and independent specialists regarding scientific data and interpretations contained in this proposed rule. We will send copies of this proposed rule to the peer reviewers immediately following publication in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . We will ensure that the opinions of peer reviewers are objective and unbiased by following the guidelines set forth in the Director's Memo, which updates and clarifies Service policy on peer review (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 2016). The purpose of such review is to ensure that our decisions are based on scientifically sound data, assumptions, and analysis. Accordingly, our final decision may differ from this proposal. Comments from peer reviewers will be posted at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and included in the decision file for the final rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Previous Federal Action</HD> Federal Government actions on white sedge began as a result of section 12 of the Act, which directed the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution to prepare a report on those plants considered to be endangered, threatened, or extinct in the United States. This report, designated as House Document No. 94-51, was presented to Congress on January 9, 1975, and included white sedge as an endangered species (Ripley 1975, p. 56). We published a notice on July 1, 1975 (40 FR 27823), of our acceptance of the report of the Smithsonian Institution as a petition within the context of section 4(c)(2) of the Act (petition provisions are now found in section 4(b)(3) of the Act) and our intention thereby to review the status of the plant taxa named therein. White sedge was included in the July 1, 1975, notice (40 FR 27823 at 27833). On June 16, 1976, we published a proposal (41 FR 24523) to determine approximately 1,700 vascular plant species, including white sedge, to be endangered species pursuant to section 4 of the Act. The list of 1,700 plant taxa was assemble ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 23k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━