Endangered and Threatened Wildlife; 90-Day Finding on a Petition To List the Alabama Shad as Threatened or Endangered 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. 240718-0199; RTID 0648-XR134]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife; 90-Day Finding on a Petition To List the Alabama Shad as Threatened or Endangered Under the Endangered Species Act</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Department of Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> 90-Day petition finding; request for information, and initiation of a status review. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We, NMFS, announce a 90-day finding on a petition to list the Alabama shad ( <E T="03">Alosa alabamae</E> ) as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The petitioners also request that we designate critical habitat. We find that the petition presents substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that the petitioned action may be warranted. Therefore, we are initiating a status review of the Alabama shad to determine whether listing under the ESA is warranted. To support a comprehensive status review, we are soliciting scientific and commercial information regarding this species from any interested party. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Scientific and commercial information pertinent to the petitioned action must be received by September 23, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit scientific and commercial information relevant to our review of the status of Alabama shad, identified by “Alabama shad Petition” or by the docket number, NOAA-NMFS-2024-0052 by the following method: • <E T="03">Electronic Submissions:</E> Submit all electronic public comments via the Federal eRulemaking Portal. Go to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and enter NOAA-NMFS-2024-0052 in the Search box. Click on the “Comment” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments. <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 personal identifying information ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> name, address, etc.), 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). Interested persons may obtain a copy of the petition online at the NMFS website: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/endangered-species-conservation/candidate-species-under-endangered-species-act.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Calusa Horn, NMFS Southeast Region, at <E T="03">Calusa.Horn@noaa.gov,</E> (727) 551-5782; or Heather Austin, NMFS Office of Protected Resources, at <E T="03">Heather.Austin@noaa.gov,</E> (301) 427-8422. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> On January 9, 2024, we received a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians, Alabama Rivers Alliance, American Whitewater, Black Warrior Riverkeeper, Cahaba Riverkeeper, Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Choctawhatchee Riverkeeper, Coosa Riverkeeper, Forest Keeper, Healthy Gulf, Healthy Oceans Coalition, Mobile Baykeeper, and Pearl Riverkeeper (Petitioners) to list the Alabama shad ( <E T="03">Alosa alabamae</E> ) as an endangered or threatened species under the ESA, and to designate critical habitat concurrent with the listing. The petition asserts that Alabama shad is threatened by all five of the ESA section 4(a)(1) factors: (1) the present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of habitat or range; (2) overutilization for commercial, recreational, scientific, or educational purposes; (3) disease or predation; (4) the inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms to address identified threats; and (5) other natural or manmade factors affecting its continued existence (16 U.S.C. 1533(a)(1), 50 CFR 424.11(c)). The petition is available online (see <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> , above). This is the second petition we have received from the Center for Biological Diversity to list the Alabama shad under the ESA. The first petition was received on April 20, 2010. On February 17, 2011, we published a negative 90-day finding (76 FR 9320) stating that the petition did not present substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that the petitioned action to list Alabama shad may be warranted. On April 28, 2011, in response to the negative 90-day finding, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent to sue the Department of Commerce and NMFS for alleged violations of the ESA in making its finding. The Center for Biological Diversity filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on January 18, 2012. On June 21, 2013, Center for Biological Diversity and Department of Commerce settled the lawsuit. We agreed to reevaluate the original listing petition, as well as information in our files, and publish a new 90-day finding. On September 19, 2013, we published a 90-day finding with our determination that the petition presented substantial scientific and commercial information indicating that the petitioned action may be warranted (78 FR 57611). On January 12, 2017, we determined that listing Alabama shad as threatened or endangered under the ESA was not warranted and published a 12-month finding in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (82 FR 4022). <HD SOURCE="HD1">ESA Statutory, Regulatory, and Policy Provisions, and Evaluation Framework</HD> Section 4(b)(3)(A) of the ESA of 1973, as amended (16 U.S.C. 1531 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), requires, to the maximum extent practicable, that within 90 days of receipt of a petition to list a species as threatened or endangered, the Secretary of Commerce make a finding on whether that petition presents substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that the petitioned action may be warranted, and to promptly publish such finding in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (16 U.S.C. 1533(b)(3)(A)). When it is found that substantial scientific or commercial information in a petition indicates the petitioned action may be warranted (a “positive 90-day finding”), we are required to promptly commence a review of the status of the species concerned during which we will conduct a comprehensive review of the best available scientific and commercial information. In such cases, we conclude the review with a finding as to whether the petitioned action is warranted within 12 months of receipt of the petition. Because the finding at the 12-month stage is based on a more thorough review of the available information, as compared to the narrow scope of review at the 90-day stage, a “may be warranted” finding does not prejudge the outcome of the status review. Under the ESA, a listing determination must address a species, which is defined to also include subspecies and, for any vertebrate species, any distinct population segment (DPS) that interbreeds when mature (16 U.S.C. 1532(16)). A joint NMFS-U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) (jointly, “the Services”) policy clarifies the agencies' interpretation of the phrase “distinct population segment” for the purposes of listing, delisting, and reclassifying a species under the ESA (61 FR 4722; February 7, 1996). A species, subspecies, or DPS is “endangered” if it is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range, and “threatened” if it is likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range (ESA sections 3(6) and 3(20), respectively, 16 U.S.C. 1532(6) and (20)). Pursuant to the ESA and our implementing regulations, we determine whether species are threatened or endangered based on any one or a combination of the following five section 4(a)(1) factors: the present or threatened destruction, modification, or curtailment of habitat or range; overutilization for commercial, recreational, scientific, or educational purposes; disease or predation; inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms to address identified threats; or any other natural or manmade factors affecting the species' existence (16 U.S.C. 1533(a)(1), 50 CFR 424.11(c)). ESA-implementing regulations issued jointly by the Services (50 CFR 424.14(h)(1)(i)) define “substantial scientific or commercial information” in the context of reviewing a petition to list, delist, or reclassify a species as credible scientific or commercial information in support of the petitioner's claims such that a reasonable person conducting an impartial scientific review would conclude that the action proposed in the petition may be warranted. Conclusions drawn in the petition without the support of credible scientific or commercial information will not be considered “substantial information.” In reaching the initial (90-day) finding on the petition, we will consider the information described in 50 CFR 424.14(c), (d), and (g) (if applicable). Our determination as to whether the petition provides substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that the petitioned action may be warranted will depend in part on the degree to which the petition includes the following types of information: (1) information on current population status and trends and estimates of current population sizes and distributions, both in captivity and the wild, if available; (2) identification of the factors under s ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 54k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━