Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Proposed Listing Determinations for Ten Species of Giant Clams Under the Endangered Species Act

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Parts 223 and 224</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 240626-0177; RTID 0648-XF174]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Proposed Listing Determinations for Ten Species of Giant Clams Under the Endangered Species Act</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; availability of status review; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We, NMFS, have completed a comprehensive status review of seven species of giant clams ( <E T="03">Hippopus hippopus, H. porcellanus, Tridacna derasa, T. gigas, T. mbalavuana, T. squamosa,</E> and <E T="03">T. squamosina</E> ) in response to a petition to list these species as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Based on the best scientific and commercial data available, including the Status Review Report, and after taking into account efforts being made to protect these species, we have determined that <E T="03">H. porcellanus, T. mbalavuana,</E> and <E T="03">T. squamosina</E> are in danger of extinction throughout the entirety of their respective ranges, <E T="03">T. derasa</E> and <E T="03">T. gigas</E> are in danger of extinction in a significant portion of their respective ranges, and <E T="03">H. hippopus</E> is likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout a significant portion of its range. Therefore, we propose to list <E T="03">H. porcellanus, T. mbalavuana, T. squamosina, T. derasa,</E> and <E T="03">T. gigas</E> as endangered species and <E T="03">H. hippopus</E> as a threatened species under the ESA. We have determined that the fluted clam, <E T="03">T. squamosa,</E> is not currently in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range and is not likely to become so within the foreseeable future. Therefore, we find that <E T="03">T. squamosa</E> does not meet the definition of a threatened or an endangered species under section 4(a) of the ESA. Further, we propose to exercise the discretionary authority of section 4(d) to extend the prohibitions of section 9 of the ESA to the proposed threatened species, <E T="03">H. hippopus.</E> At this time, we do not propose to designate critical habitat for the three species proposed to be listed that occur within U.S. jurisdiction ( <E T="03">H. hippopus, T. derasa,</E> and <E T="03">T. gigas</E> ) because critical habitat for these species is not yet determinable. Using the authority of section 4(e) of the ESA, we also propose to list <E T="03">T. crocea, T. maxima, T. noae,</E> and <E T="03">T. squamosa</E> as threatened species due to the similarity of appearance of products derived from these species ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> meat, worked shell products, and pearls) to those derived from the six aforementioned species proposed to be listed based on their extinction risk. We propose a special rule to define activities that would and would not be prohibited with respect to these four species in order to mitigate the substantial enforcement challenge associated with this similarity of appearance concern. We solicit information to inform the final listing determination and to inform a future proposal for any determinable critical habitat. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Comments must be received by October 23, 2024. <E T="03">Public informational meetings and public hearings:</E> In-person and virtual public hearings on this proposed rule will be held during the public comment period at dates, times, and locations to be announced in a forthcoming <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notice. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit data, information, or written comments on this document, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2017-0029, by either of the following methods: • <E T="03">Electronic Submissions:</E> Submit all electronic public comments via the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal. Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and enter <E T="03">NOAA-NMFS-2017-0029</E> in the Search box. Click on the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Submit written comments to Endangered Species Division, Office of Protected Resources (F/PR3), National Marine Fisheries Service, 1315 East West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA, Attn: Giant Clams Species Listing Proposed Rule. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> Comments sent by any other method, to any other address or individual, or received after the end of the comment period, may not be considered by NMFS. All comments received are a part of the public record and will generally be posted for public viewing on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> without change. All personally identifying information ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> name, address, <E T="03">etc.</E> ), confidential business information, or otherwise sensitive information submitted voluntarily by the sender will be publicly accessible. NMFS will accept anonymous comments (enter “N/A” in the required fields if you wish to remain anonymous). The Status Review Report associated with this determination, its references, and the petition can be accessed electronically at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/action/proposed-rule-10-species-giant-clams-under-endangered-species-act.</E> The peer review plan, associated charge statement, and peer review report can be accessed electronically at: <E T="03">https://www.noaa.gov/information-technology/status-review-report-of-7-giant-clam-species-petitioned-under-us-endangered-species-act-hippopus.</E> The draft Environmental Assessment and Initial Regulatory Flexibility Analysis associated with the proposed ESA section 4(d) regulation for <E T="03">T. crocea, T. maxima, T. noae,</E> and <E T="03">T. squamosa</E> can be accessed electronically via the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal by navigating to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and entering <E T="03">NOAA-NMFS-2017-0029</E> in the Search box. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> John Rippe, NMFS Office of Protected Resources, (301) 427-8467, <E T="03">john.rippe@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On August 7, 2016, we received a petition from Dwayne Meadows to list 10 species of giant clams (Cardiidae: Tridacninae) as threatened or endangered under the ESA throughout their respective ranges. The petitioner also requested that critical habitat be designated in waters subject to U.S. jurisdiction concurrently with listing under the ESA. On June 26, 2017, we published a 90-day finding (82 FR 28946) announcing that the petition presented substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that the petitioned action may be warranted for 7 of the 10 species listed in the petition: <E T="03">Hippopus hippopus</E> (horse's hoof, bear paw, or strawberry clam), <E T="03">Hippopus porcellanus</E> (porcelain or China clam), <E T="03">Tridacna derasa</E> (smooth giant clam), <E T="03">Tridacna gigas</E> (true giant clam), <E T="03">Tridacna mbalavuana</E> (syn. <E T="03">T. tevoroa;</E> devil or tevoro clam), <E T="03">Tridacna squamosa</E> (fluted or scaly clam), and <E T="03">Tridacna squamosina</E> (syn. <E T="03">T. costata;</E> Red Sea giant clam), but that the petition did not present substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that the petitioned action may be warranted for the other 3 species ( <E T="03">T. crocea, T. maxima,</E> or <E T="03">T. noae</E> ). We also announced the initiation of a status review of the seven aforementioned giant clam species, as required by section 4(b)(3)(A) of the ESA, and requested information to inform the agency's decision on whether these species warrant listing as endangered or threatened under the ESA. We received information from the public in response to the 90-day finding and incorporated the information into both the Status Review Report (Rippe <E T="03">et al.,</E> 2023) and this proposed rule. This information complemented our thorough review of the best available scientific and commercial data for these species (see <E T="03">Status Review</E> below). <HD SOURCE="HD2">Listing Determinations Under the Endangered Species Act</HD> We are responsible for determining whether species are threatened or endangered under the ESA (16 U.S.C. 1531 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). To be considered for listing under the ESA, a group of organisms must constitute a “species,” which is defined in section 3 of the ESA to include any subspecies of fish or wildlife or plants, and any distinct population segment (DPS) of any species of vertebrate fish or wildlife which interbreeds when mature (16 U.S.C. 1532(16)). On February 7, 1996, NMFS and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS; together, the Services) adopted a policy describing what constitutes a DPS of a taxonomic species (“DPS Policy,” 61 FR 4722). The joint DPS Policy identifies two elements that must be considered when identifying a DPS: (1) The discreteness of the population segment in relation to the remainder of the taxon to which it belongs; and (2) the significance of the population segment to the remainder of the taxon to which it belongs. Because giant clams are invertebrates they cannot be listed as DPSs, and the DPS Policy does not apply here. Section 3 of the ESA defines an endangered species as “any species which is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range” and a threatened species as one “which is likely to become an end ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 390k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━