Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Endangered Species Status for Ocmulgee Skullcap and Designation of Critical Habitat

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-R4-ES-2021-0059; FXES1111090FEDR-256-FF09E21000]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BE01</RIN> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Endangered Species Status for Ocmulgee Skullcap and Designation of Critical Habitat</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 Ocmulgee skullcap ( <E T="03">Scutellaria ocmulgee</E> ), a plant species from Georgia and South Carolina as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Act), as amended. We also designate critical habitat. In total, approximately 6,661 acres (2,696 hectares) in Bibb, Bleckley, Burke, Columbia, Houston, Monroe, Pulaski, Richmond, Screven, and Twiggs Counties, Georgia, and in Aiken and Edgefield Counties, South Carolina, fall within the boundaries of the critical habitat designation. This rule extends the protections of the Act to this species and its designated critical habitat. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective November 29, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> This final rule is available on the internet at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> . Comments and materials we received are available for public inspection at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R4-ES-2021-0059. <E T="03">Availability of supporting materials:</E> Supporting materials we used in preparing this rule, such as the species status assessment report, are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R4-ES-2021-0059. For the critical habitat designation, the coordinates or plot points or both from which the maps are generated are included in the decision file for this critical habitat designation and are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R4-ES-2021-0059. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Peter Maholland, Field Supervisor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Georgia Ecological Services Field Office, 355 East Hancock Avenue, Room 320, Athens, GA 30601; telephone 706-613-9493. 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, 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 endangered 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 Ocmulgee skullcap meets the Act's definition of an endangered species; therefore, we are listing it as such and finalizing a designation of its critical habitat. Both listing a species as an endangered or threatened species and designating critical habitat 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 Ocmulgee skullcap as an endangered species and designates critical habitat for the species in 18 units totaling approximately 6,661 acres (ac) (2,696 hectares (ha)) within portions of 10 counties in Georgia and 2 counties in South Carolina. <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 Ocmulgee skullcap is an endangered species due to the following threats: habitat loss and fragmentation due to development and urbanization (Factor A); competition and encroachment from nonnative, invasive species (Factors A and E); and herbivory from white-tailed deer ( <E T="03">Odocoileus virginianus</E> ) (Factor C). Section 4(a)(3) of the Act requires that the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary) to the maximum extent prudent and determinable, concurrently with listing designate critical habitat for the species. 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 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. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Previous Federal Actions</HD> Please refer to the proposed listing and critical habitat rule (87 FR 37378) for the Ocmulgee skullcap published on June 22, 2022, for a detailed description of previous Federal actions concerning this species. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Peer Review</HD> A species status assessment (SSA) team prepared an SSA report for the Ocmulgee skullcap. 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 of listing actions under the Act, we solicited independent scientific review of the information contained in the Ocmulgee skullcap SSA report. As discussed in the June 22, 2022, proposed rule (87 FR 37378), we sent the SSA report to three independent peer reviewers and received one response. The peer review can be found at the docket on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> In preparing the proposed rule, we incorporated the results of the review, 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 under Summary of Comments and Recommendations, below. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Changes From the Proposed Rule</HD> This final rule incorporates changes from our June 22, 2022, proposed rule (87 FR 37378) based on the comments that we received and respond to in this document as discussed in the Summary of Comments and Recommendations. Based on the comments and new information received (as described below) and our further consideration of the threats to the species, we determined the current risk of extinction is higher (see Determination of Ocmulgee Skullcap's Status, below) than we characterized in the proposal to list the Ocmulgee skullcap as a threatened species (87 FR 37378; June 22, 2022). We reassessed our analysis and found that habitat conditions in some areas, along with the low resiliency condition of most of the known Ocmulgee skullcap populations, places the species at a currently high risk of extinction throughout its range. Thus, after evaluating the best available information and the Act's regulations and policies, we determined that the Ocmulgee skullcap meets the definition of an endangered species, and such status is more appropriate than that of a threatened species as originally proposed. Because we determined that the Ocmulgee skullcap meets the definition of an endangered species, a 4(d) rule is inapplicable; consequently, we have removed that portion of the proposed rule issued under the authority of section 4(d) of the Act from this final rule. New information ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> updated surveys and habitat condition in areas considered extirpated or containing no suitable habitat, including updates regarding the Savannah River Bluffs Natural Heritage Preserve and Horse Creek sites) was submitted to us during the proposed rule's comment period. This new information and the comments we received during the comment period prompted us to reevaluate the best available information around the inclusion of sites previously considered extirpated in the SSA report, which is reflected in a new version of the SSA report (version 1.3) (Service 2023, pp. 21-22; 20-28). Applying the methodology to designate critical habitat (see Criteria Used to Identify Critical Habitat, below) to the new information, we determined that it is appropriate to add an occupied subunit to the critical habitat designation. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 193k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━