Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Threatened Species Status for Pearl River Map Turtle With Section 4(d) Rule; and Threatened Species Status for Alabama Map Turtle, Barbour's Map Turtle, Escambia Map Turtle, and Pascagoula Map Turtle Due to Similarity of Appearance With 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-2021-0097; FXES1111090FEDR-245-FF09E21000]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BF42</RIN> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Threatened Species Status for Pearl River Map Turtle With Section 4(d) Rule; and Threatened Species Status for Alabama Map Turtle, Barbour's Map Turtle, Escambia Map Turtle, and Pascagoula Map Turtle Due to Similarity of Appearance With 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), list the Pearl River map turtle ( <E T="03">Graptemys pearlensis</E> ), a freshwater turtle species from the Pearl River drainage in Mississippi and Louisiana as a threatened species with 4(d) protective regulations under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Act), as amended. Due to similarity of appearance, we also list the Alabama map turtle ( <E T="03">Graptemys pulchra</E> ), Barbour's map turtle ( <E T="03">Graptemys barbouri</E> ), Escambia map turtle ( <E T="03">Graptemys ernsti</E> ), and Pascagoula map turtle ( <E T="03">Graptemys gibbonsi</E> ) as threatened species with 4(d) protective regulations under the Act. This rule adds these species to the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective August 12, 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-2021-0097 and at the Service's Environmental Conservation Online System (ECOS) species page at <E T="03">https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp/species/10895.</E> Comments and materials we received, as well as supporting documentation we used in preparing this rule (such as the species status assessment report), are available for public inspection at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R4-ES-2021-0097. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> James Austin, Field Supervisor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Mississippi Ecological Services Field Office, 6578 Dogwood View Parkway, Suite A, Jackson, MS 39213; telephone 601-321-1129. 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 (16 U.S.C. 1531 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), 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 Pearl River map turtle meets the Act's definition of a threatened species; therefore, we are listing it as such. In addition, due to similarity of appearance, we have determined threatened species status for the Alabama map turtle, Barbour's map turtle, Escambia map turtle, and Pascagoula map turtle. 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 Pearl River map turtle as a threatened species with a rule issued under section 4(d) of the Act (a “4(d) rule”). It also lists the Alabama map turtle, Barbour's map turtle, Escambia map turtle, and Pascagoula map turtle as threatened species based on their similarity of appearance to the Pearl River map turtle under section 4(e) of the Act with a 4(d) rule for these species. In our November 23, 2021, proposed rule, we found critical habitat to be not prudent for the Pearl River map turtle because of the potential for an increase in poaching. However, we have reevaluated the prudency determination based on public comment and the already available information in the public domain that indicates where the species can be found. Consequently, we have determined that critical habitat is prudent but not determinable at this time for the species. We intend to publish a proposed rule designating critical habitat for the Pearl River map turtle in the near future. <E T="03">The basis for our action.</E> Under the Act, we may determine that a species is an endangered 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 threats to the Pearl River map turtle include habitat degradation or loss (degraded water quality, channel and hydrologic modifications/impoundments, agricultural runoff, mining, and development—Factor A), collection (Factor B), and effects of climate change (increasing temperatures, drought, sea-level rise (SLR), hurricane regime changes, and increased seasonal precipitation—Factor E). Section 4(a)(3) of the Act requires the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary), to the maximum extent prudent and determinable, concurrently with listing designate critical habitat for the species. We have not yet been able to obtain the necessary economic information needed to develop a proposed critical habitat designation for the Pearl River map turtle, although we are in the process of obtaining this information. At this time, we find that designation of critical habitat for the Pearl River map turtle is not determinable. When critical habitat is not determinable, the Act allows the Service an additional year to publish a critical habitat designation (16 U.S.C. 1533(b)(6)(C)(ii)). <HD SOURCE="HD1">Previous Federal Actions</HD> Please refer to the proposed listing rule (86 FR 66624; November 23, 2021) for a detailed description of previous Federal actions concerning the Pearl River map turtle, Alabama map turtle, Barbour's map turtle, Escambia map turtle, and Pascagoula map turtle. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Peer Review</HD> A species status assessment (SSA) team prepared an SSA report for the Pearl River map turtle (Service 2023, 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 in listing actions under the Act, we solicited independent scientific review of the information contained in the Pearl River map turtle SSA report, version 1.1 (Service 2021, entire). We sent the SSA report to five independent peer reviewers and received responses from all five reviewers; three substantive comments were provided by two peer reviewers. We notified Tribal nations early in the SSA process for the Pearl River map turtle. We sent the draft SSA report for review to the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and received comments that were addressed in the SSA report. The peer reviews can be found at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R4-ES-2021-0097 and at our Mississippi Ecological Services Field Office (see <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> ). In preparing the proposed rule, we incorporated the results of these reviews, 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 the Summary of Comments and Recommendations, below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Changes From the Proposed Rule</HD> After consideration of the comments we received during the November 23, 2021, proposed rule's comment period (refer to Summary of Comments and Recommendations, below), and new information published or obtained since the proposed rule was published, we updated the SSA report to include new information. The revised SSA report is available as version 1.2 (Service 2023, entire). In addition, in this final rule, we add information to the listing determination for the Pearl River map turtle and the associated 4(d) rule's exceptions to prohibitions. Many small, nonsubstantive changes and corrections, which do not affect the determination ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> minor clarifications, correcting grammatical errors, etc.), are made throughout this document. Below is a summary of changes we make in this final rule. (1) We update the citation for one literature source reporting on the status of the Pearl River and Pascagoula map turtles (Lindeman et al. 2020, entire) to reflect its recent publication in a peer-reviewed journal. (2) We incorporate an additional citation (Refsnider et al. 2016, entire) to discuss ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 215k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━