Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Critical Habitat Designations for Florida Manatee and Antillean Manatee

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-R4-ES-2024-0073; FXES1111090FEDR-245-FF09E21000]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BH47</RIN> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Critical Habitat Designations for Florida Manatee and Antillean Manatee</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 revise the critical habitat designation for the Florida manatee ( <E T="03">Trichechus manatus latirostris</E> ) and to designate critical habitat for the Antillean manatee ( <E T="03">T. m. manatus</E> ), under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended (Act). In 1976, we designated critical habitat of approximately 965,394 acres (ac) (390,681 hectares (ha)) in Florida for the Florida manatee based on where large concentrations of manatees were known to occur at the time, but no critical habitat was ever designated for the Antillean manatee subspecies. After a review of the best scientific data available, we propose to revise the existing designated critical habitat for the Florida manatee and designate critical habitat for the Antillean manatee based on the physical or biological features essential to the conservation of each subspecies. The total proposed designation for Florida manatee is 1,904,191 ac (770,599 ha) and 78,121 ac (31,614 ha) for the Antillean manatee subspecies. We also announce the availability of an economic analysis of the proposed revised designation of critical habitat for the Florida manatee and proposed designation for the Antillean manatee. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We will accept comments received or postmarked on or before November 25, 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 a public hearing, in writing, at the address shown in <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> by November 8, 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-R4-ES-2024-0073, which is the docket number for this rulemaking. Then, click on the Search button. On the resulting page, in the panel on the left side of the screen, under the Document Type heading, check 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-R4-ES-2024-0073, 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> Supporting materials for the proposed critical habitat designations in this document are included in the decision file for this rulemaking and are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R4-ES-2024-0073. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Nikki Colangelo, Acting Classification and Recovery Division Manager, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Florida Ecological Services Field Office, 777 37th Street, Suite D-101, Vero Beach, Florida 32960; telephone 772-226-8138. 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-R4-ES-2024-0073 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">Executive Summary</HD> <E T="03">Why we need to publish a rule.</E> Under section 4(a)(3) of the Act, if we determine that a species is an endangered or threatened species, we must designate critical habitat to the maximum extent prudent and determinable. Revisions and designations of critical habitat designation 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 document proposes to revise the existing critical habitat designation for the Florida manatee and, for the reason described below, to add a critical habitat designation for the Antillean manatee. This proposed rule would remove 259,842 ac (105,154 ha) from the current Florida manatee critical habitat designation because the areas either do not meet the definition of critical habitat or they qualify for an exemption under the Act and would add 1,198,639 ac (485,072 ha) in Florida to that critical habitat designation because they meet the definition of critical habitat for the subspecies. The total proposed designation for Florida manatee is 1,904,191 ac (770,599 ha). In addition, this proposed rule would designate 78,121 ac (31,614 ha) in Puerto Rico that meet the definition of critical habitat for the Antillean manatee subspecies. <E T="03">The basis for our action.</E> 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 protection; and (ii) specific areas outside the geographical area occupied by the species at the time it is listed, upon a determination by the Secretary that such areas are essential for the conservation of the species. Section 4(b)(2) of the Act states that the Secretary must make the designation on the basis of the best scientific data available and after taking into consideration the economic impact, the impact on national security, and any other relevant impacts of specifying any particular area as critical habitat. The current critical habitat designation for the Florida manatee was described before critical habitat regulations were developed; it did not identify specific physical or biological features that are essential to the conservation of the subspecies. Instead, it described specific waterways that were known to be important concentration areas for Florida manatees at that time. The geographic areas originally designated as critical habitat for the Florida manatee have been reevaluated based on recent scientific studies of the subspecies' distribution, habitat use, and habitat needs. We are proposing a revised critical habitat designation for the Florida manatee based on that reevaluation. We are also proposing a critical habitat designation for the Antillean manatee because we are reassessing the listing status of the West Indian manatee <E T="03">(Trichechus manatus),</E> and, based on the reassessment, we may propose to reclassify the species or revise the listed entity. The West Indian manatee includes two recognized subspecies, the Antillean manatee, <E T="03">Trichechus manatus manatus,</E> and the Florida manatee, <E T="03">Trichechus manatus latirostris</E> (Rice 1998, p. 129). Each subspecies has distinctive morphological features and occurs in discrete areas with rare overlap between ranges (Hatt 1934, p. 538; Domning and Hayek 1986, p. 136; and Alvarez-Alemán et al. 2010, p. 148). Therefore, for the purposes of this proposed rule, we have used the subspecies to differentiate between the proposed critical habitat areas. <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 governmental agencies, Native American Tribes, the scientific community, industry, or any other interested parties concerning this proposed rule. We particularly seek comments or information concerning: (1) The amount and distribution of Florida manatee and Antillean manatee habitat. (2) Any additional areas occurring within the range of either subspecies that are within the jurisdiction of the United States (the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts of the United States for the Florida manatee, and Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands for the Antillean manatee) that should be included in the designation because they (i) were occupied at the time of listing and contain the physical or biological features that are essential to the conservation of the subspecies and that may require special management considerations or protection, or (ii) were unoccupied at the time of listing and are essential for the conservation of the subspecies. (3) The criteria used to identify critical habitat, including the boundaries of specific areas. (4) Special management considerations or protection that may be needed in critical habitat areas we are proposing, including managing for the potential effects of climate change. (5) Whether areas not occupied at the time of listing qualify as habitat for the species and are essential for the conservation of the species. (6) Land use designations and cu ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 275k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━