National Wildlife Refuge System; 2024-2025 Station-Specific Hunting and Sport Fishing Regulations

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 32</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-HQ-NWRS-2024-0034; FXRS12610900000-245-FF09R20000]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BH17</RIN> <SUBJECT>National Wildlife Refuge System; 2024-2025 Station-Specific Hunting and Sport Fishing Regulations</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), open or expand hunting opportunities on 12 National Wildlife Refuges (NWRs). We also close hunting on 111 acres at Crab Orchard NWR so that the area can be repurposed for other recreational uses, including camping. We also make changes to existing station-specific regulations in order to reduce the regulatory burden on the public, increase access for hunters and anglers on Service lands and waters, and comply with a Presidential mandate for plain-language standards. Finally, the best available science, analyzed as part of this rulemaking, indicates that lead ammunition and tackle have negative impacts on both wildlife and human health. With this final rule, Canaan Valley NWR in West Virginia will require lead-free ammunition for all hunting on the new Big Cove Unit. Additionally, Des Lacs, J. Clark Salyer, Lostwood, and Upper Souris NWRs in North Dakota will require lead-free ammunition for newly opened elk hunting. While the Service continues to evaluate the future of lead use in hunting and fishing on Service lands and waters, this rulemaking does not include any opportunities that increase or authorize the new use of lead. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective November 6, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Christian Myers, (571) 422-3595. 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> The National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act of 1966 (16 U.S.C. 668dd-668ee), as amended (Administration Act), closes NWRs in all States except Alaska to all uses until opened. The Secretary of the Interior (Secretary) may open refuge areas to any use, including hunting and/or sport fishing, upon a determination that the use is compatible with the purposes of the refuge and National Wildlife Refuge System (Refuge System) mission. The action also must be in accordance with provisions of all laws applicable to the areas, developed in coordination with the appropriate State fish and wildlife agency(ies), consistent with the principles of sound fish and wildlife management and administration, and otherwise in the public interest. These requirements ensure that we maintain the biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health of the Refuge System for the benefit of present and future generations of Americans. We annually review hunting and sport fishing programs to determine whether to include additional stations or whether individual station regulations governing existing programs need modifications. Changing environmental conditions, State and Federal regulations, and other factors affecting fish and wildlife populations and habitat may warrant modifications to station-specific regulations to ensure the continued compatibility of hunting and sport fishing programs and to ensure that these programs will not materially interfere with or detract from the fulfillment of station purposes or the Service's mission. Provisions governing hunting and sport fishing on refuges are in title 50 of the Code of Federal Regulations at part 32 (50 CFR part 32), and on hatcheries at part 71 (50 CFR part 71). We regulate hunting and sport fishing to: • Ensure compatibility with refuge and hatchery purpose(s); • Properly manage fish and wildlife resource(s); • Protect other values; • Ensure visitor safety; and • Provide opportunities for fish- and wildlife-dependent recreation. On many stations where we decide to allow hunting and sport fishing, our general policy of adopting regulations identical to State hunting and sport fishing regulations is adequate to meet these objectives. On other stations, we must supplement State regulations with more-restrictive Federal regulations to ensure that we meet our management responsibilities, as outlined under Statutory Authority, below. We issue station-specific hunting and sport fishing regulations when we open wildlife refuges and fish hatcheries to migratory game bird hunting, upland game hunting, big game hunting, or sport fishing. These regulations may list the wildlife species that you may hunt or fish; seasons; bag or creel (container for carrying fish) limits; methods of hunting or sport fishing; descriptions of areas open to hunting or sport fishing; and other provisions as appropriate. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Statutory Authority</HD> The Administration Act, as amended by the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997 (Improvement Act; Pub. L. 105-57), governs the administration and public use of refuges, and the Refuge Recreation Act of 1962 (Recreation Act; 16 U.S.C. 460k-460k-4) governs the administration and public use of refuges and hatcheries. Amendments enacted by the Improvement Act were built upon the Administration Act in a manner that provides an “organic act” for the Refuge System, similar to organic acts that exist for other public Federal lands. The Improvement Act serves to ensure that we effectively manage the Refuge System as a national network of lands, waters, and interests for the protection and conservation of our Nation's wildlife resources. The Administration Act states first and foremost that we focus our Refuge System mission on conservation of fish, wildlife, and plant resources and their habitats. The Improvement Act requires the Secretary, before allowing a new use of a refuge, or before expanding, renewing, or extending an existing use of a refuge, to determine that the use is compatible with the purpose for which the refuge was established and the mission of the Refuge System. The Improvement Act established as the policy of the United States that wildlife-dependent recreation, when compatible, is a legitimate and appropriate public use of the Refuge System, through which the American public can develop an appreciation for fish and wildlife. The Improvement Act established six wildlife-dependent recreational uses as the priority general public uses of the Refuge System. These uses are hunting, fishing, wildlife observation and photography, and environmental education and interpretation. The Recreation Act authorizes the Secretary to administer areas within the Refuge System and Hatchery System for public recreation as an appropriate incidental or secondary use only to the extent that doing so is practicable and not inconsistent with the primary purpose(s) for which Congress and the Service established the areas. The Recreation Act requires that any recreational use of refuge or hatchery lands be compatible with the primary purpose(s) for which we established the refuge and not inconsistent with other previously authorized operations. The Administration Act and Recreation Act also authorize the Secretary to issue regulations to carry out the purposes of the Acts and regulate uses. We develop specific management plans for each refuge prior to opening it to hunting or sport fishing. In many cases, we develop station-specific regulations to ensure the compatibility of the programs with the purpose(s) for which we established the refuge or hatchery and the Refuge and Hatchery System mission. We ensure initial compliance with the Administration Act and the Recreation Act for hunting and sport fishing on newly acquired land through an interim determination of compatibility made at or near the time of acquisition. These regulations ensure that we make the determinations required by these acts prior to adding refuges to the lists of areas open to hunting and sport fishing in 50 CFR parts 32 and 71. We ensure continued compliance by the development of comprehensive conservation plans and step-down management plans, and by annual review of hunting and sport fishing programs and regulations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Comments and Responses</HD> On August 2, 2024, we published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (89 FR 63139) a proposed rule to open or expand hunting and fishing opportunities at 12 refuges for the 2024-2025 hunting seasons. We accepted public comments on the proposed rule for 30 days, ending September 3, 2024. By that date, we received 154 comments on the proposed rule. More than two-thirds of these comments were identical or nonsubstantive comments. We received 68 unique comments, and 47 of those comments were substantive. We discuss the unique, substantive comments we received below by topic. Beyond our responses below, additional station-specific information on how we responded to comments on particular hunting or fishing opportunities at a given refuge or hatchery can be found in that station's final hunting and/or fishing package, each of which can be located in Docket No. FWS-HQ-NWRS-2024-0034 on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <E T="03">Comment (1):</E> We received more than 100 comments expressing general support for the proposed hunting expansions in the rule. These comments of general support either expressed appreciation for the increased hunting access in the proposed rule overall, expressed appreciation for increased access at ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 164k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━