Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; 90-Day Finding and 12-Month Determination on a Petition To Revise Critical Habitat for Sonora Chub

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-R2-ES-2022-0012; FXES1111090FEDR-245-FF09E21000]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; 90-Day Finding and 12-Month Determination on a Petition To Revise Critical Habitat for Sonora Chub</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Fish and Wildlife Service, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notification of a 90-day petition finding and 12-month determination. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service), announce our 90-day finding and 12-month determination on how to proceed in response to a petition to revise critical habitat for Sonora chub ( <E T="03">Gila ditaenia</E> ) pursuant to the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended (Act). The petition requests that the Service revise the existing critical habitat designation in Arizona by adding California Gulch. Our 90-day finding is that the petition, in conjunction with information readily available in our files, presents substantial scientific information indicating that the requested revision may be warranted. Our 12-month determination is that we intend to proceed with processing the petition by assessing critical habitat during the next 5-year status review for Sonora chub scheduled for release as soon as fiscal year 2027, as resources allow. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The finding and the determination announced in this document were made on July 16, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> A detailed description of the basis for this finding and this determination is available on the internet at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R2-ES-2022-0012. Information and supporting documentation used in preparing this finding and determination is also available by contacting the person listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . Please submit any new information, materials, comments, or questions concerning this finding to the contact listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Heather Whitlaw, Arizona Ecological Services Field Office, 9828 North 31st Ave. C3, Phoenix, AZ 85051-2517; telephone 602-242-0210. 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">Background</HD> 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. In accordance with section 3(5)(A)(i) of the Act and regulations at 50 CFR 424.12(b), in determining which areas we will designate as critical habitat from within the geographical area occupied by the species at the time of listing, we consider the physical or biological features that are essential to the conservation of the species and which may require special management considerations or protection. Our implementing regulations at 50 CFR 424.02 define the “physical or biological features essential to the conservation of the species” as the features that occur in specific areas and that are essential to support the life-history needs of the species, including, but not limited to, water characteristics, soil type, geological features, sites, prey, vegetation, symbiotic species, or other features. A feature may be a single habitat characteristic or a more complex combination of habitat characteristics. Features may include habitat characteristics that support ephemeral or dynamic habitat conditions. Features may also be expressed in terms relating to principles of conservation biology, such as patch size, distribution distances, and connectivity. In addition, our implementing regulations at 50 CFR 424.02 define “special management considerations or protection” as methods or procedures useful in protecting the physical or biological features essential to the conservation of listed species. Section 4(b)(2) of the Act states that the Secretary shall designate and make revisions to critical habitat for listed species on the basis of the best scientific data available and after taking into consideration the economic impact, national security impact, and any other relevant impact of specifying any particular area as critical habitat. The Secretary may exclude any particular area from critical habitat if she determines that the benefits of such exclusion outweigh the benefits of specifying such area as part of the critical habitat, unless she determines that the failure to designate such area as critical habitat will result in the extinction of the species concerned. Exclusion decisions are governed by the regulations at 50 CFR 424.19 and the Policy Regarding Implementation of Section 4(b)(2) of the Endangered Species Act (81 FR 7226, February 11, 2016). We also refer to a 2008 Department of the Interior Solicitor's opinion entitled “The Secretary's Authority to Exclude Areas from a Critical Habitat Designation under Section 4(b)(2) of the Endangered Species Act” (M-37016). A provision of the Administrative Procedure Act, codified at 5 U.S.C. 553(e), gives interested persons the right to petition for the issuance, amendment, or repeal of a Federal rule. Section 4(b)(3)(D) of the Act requires that we make a finding on whether a petition to revise critical habitat for a species presents substantial scientific information indicating that the revision may be warranted. Our regulations at 50 CFR 424.14(i)(1)(i) state that substantial scientific information refers to credible scientific information in support of the petition's claims such that a reasonable person conducting an impartial scientific review would conclude that the revision proposed in the petition may be warranted. Conclusions drawn in the petition without the support of credible scientific information will not be considered substantial information. In determining whether substantial scientific information exists, we consider several factors, including information submitted with, and referenced in, the petition and all other information readily available in our files. Our regulations at 50 CFR 424.14(e)(5) require that, for areas petitioned to be added to or removed from designated critical habitat that were outside the geographical area occupied by the species at the time it was listed, the petitioner must present information indicating why the petitioned areas are essential (if areas are being added) or are not essential (if areas are being removed) for the conservation of the species. To the maximum extent practicable, we are to make this finding within 90 days of our receipt of the petition and publish our notification of the finding promptly in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . We are to base this finding on information provided in the petition, supporting information submitted with the petition, and information otherwise available in our files. If we find that a petition presents substantial scientific information indicating that the revision may be warranted, we are required to determine how we intend to proceed with the requested revision within 12 months after receiving the petition and promptly publish notification of such intention in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (16 U.S.C. 1533(b)(3)(D)(ii)). We generally refer to these documents as 90-day findings and 12-month determinations or findings. Our regulations further state that we will consider whether a petition presents a complete and balanced representation of the relevant facts when making our finding of whether a petition presents substantial information that the requested action may be warranted. Thus, if we find that a petition presented only information that would be favorable to the petition outcome, ignored relevant and readily available information, and presented a biased and incomplete representation of facts, we should consider whether the petition has met the requirement to present substantial information. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Previous Federal Actions</HD> Sonora chub, a fish found in southeastern Arizona, was listed under the Act as a threatened species with critical habitat in 1986 (51 FR 16042, April 30, 1986). Thus, the Sonora chub appears in the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife at 50 CFR 17.11(h), and a critical habitat designation for the Sonora chub in Santa Cruz County, Arizona, is set forth at 50 CFR 17.95(e). On August 6, 2021, we received a petition dated July 30, 2021, from the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) to revise critical habitat for Sonora chub. The July 30, 2021, petition (hereafter referred to as “the 2021 petition”) requested that we revise critical habitat to include the length of California Gulch from at least approximately 1 mile above the Tinaja Dam to the international border, and the lower extent of Warsaw Canyon. The 2021 petition stated that the Sonora chub is currently known to occur in California Gulch, which was not occupied at the time of listing in 1986, and that it may be affected by livestock grazing and that there was an alleged ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 30k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━