Administrative Requirements; Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration and Dingell-Johnson Sport Fish Restoration Acts

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 80</CFR> <DEPDOC>[FWS-HQ-WSFR-2023-0125; FVWF51100900000-XXX-FF09W11000; FVWF94100900000-XXX-FF09W11000]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BB84</RIN> <SUBJECT>Administrative Requirements; Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration and Dingell-Johnson Sport Fish Restoration Acts</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, are proposing to update the regulations pertaining to Federal financial assistance programs and subprograms authorized under the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act and the Dingell-Johnson Sport Fish Restoration Act. We propose these updates to our regulations to ensure they reflect recent legislation; to align with the Office of Management and Budget's administrative rules for Federal financial assistance; to align with other laws, standards, and administrative processes; to respond to comments and feedback on our 2019 rulemaking action; and to provide clarity to help ensure consistency in administering our financial assistance programs and subprograms across the Nation. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We will accept comments received or postmarked on or before January 31, 2025. <E T="03">Information collection requirements:</E> If you wish to comment on the information collection requirements in this proposed rule, please note that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is required to make a decision concerning the collection of information contained in this proposed rule between 30 and 60 days after the date of publication of this proposed rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Therefore, comments should be submitted to the Service Information Collection Clearance Officer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, (see “Information collection requirements” below under <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> ) by January 31, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by the regulation identifier number 1018-BB84, by any 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-HQ-WSFR-2023-0125, 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-HQ-WSFR-2023-0125, 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 Request for Comments, below, for more information). <E T="03">Information collection requirements:</E> Send your comments on the information collection request by mail to the Service Information Collection Clearance Officer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, by email to <E T="03">Info_Coll@fws.gov;</E> or by mail to 5275 Leesburg Pike, MS: PRB (JAO/3W), Falls Church, VA 22041-3803. Please reference OMB Control Number 1018-0100 in the subject line of your comments. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Diana Swan-Pinion, Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program, Policy, and Programs Branch at <E T="03">diana_swan-pinion@fws.gov</E> or (404) 821-6844. 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. In compliance with the Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act of 2023, please see docket FWS-HQ-WSFR-2023-0125 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">Background</HD> The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's (Service) Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program (WSFR) annually apportions to fish and wildlife agencies of States, Territories, and the District of Columbia more than $1.6 billion for programs and subprograms under the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act (Wildlife Restoration Act, 50 Stat. 917, as amended; 16 U.S.C. 669 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) and the Dingell-Johnson Sport Fish Restoration Act (Sport Fish Restoration Act, 64 Stat. 430, as amended; 16 U.S.C. 777-777m, except 777e-1 and g-1) (Acts). We are proposing to update the regulations in title 50 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) at part 80, which is titled, “Administrative Requirements, Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration and Dingell-Johnson Sport Fish Restoration Acts.” The primary users of these regulations are the fish and wildlife agencies of the 50 States; the Commonwealths of Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands; the territories of Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa; and the District of Columbia (DC). We use “State” or “States” collectively to refer to these entities. The Wildlife Restoration Act does not authorize funding for DC, which receives funds only under the Sport Fish Restoration Act. These regulations tell States how they may receive annual apportionments from the Federal Aid to Wildlife Restoration Fund (16 U.S.C. 669b) and the Sport Fish Restoration and Boating Trust Fund (26 U.S.C. 9504), how they may use hunting and fishing license revenues, and what requirements States must follow when participating in the programs and subprograms under the Acts. These programs and subprograms provide financial assistance to State fish and wildlife agencies to restore or manage wildlife and sport fish and associated habitats; offer hunter and recreational shooter education and safety programs, development, recruitment, retention, and reactivation; develop and increase recreational boating access; enhance the public's understanding of water resources, aquatic life forms, and sport fishing; and develop responsible attitudes and ethics toward aquatic and related environments. Assistance Listings for these programs may be found at: <E T="03">https://sam.gov/content/assistance-listings.</E> On that website, search for numbers 15.605, 15.611, and 15.626 using the “Search Assistance Listings” function. We published the last revision of these regulations with a proposed rule in 2017 (82 FR 59564, December 15, 2017) and a final rule in 2019 (84 FR 44772, August 27, 2019; referred to below as “the 2019 final rule”). Our December 15, 2017, proposed rule was intended to be the first step in a phased approach to updating 50 CFR part 80 over a period of a few years, addressing multiple topics of concern, and ultimately leading to publishing a final rule that addressed all issues identified as important to resolve. A team of Federal and State subject matter experts were engaged in developing the strategy and topics to be addressed. Unfortunately, that process was stalled, and we were unable to complete the phased approach, so we published a final rule in 2019 that did not include all identified topics. The passage of two new laws in 2019 that amended the Wildlife Restoration Act compels the Service to reflect those changes in this proposed rule. In 2019, the Target Practice and Marksmanship Training Support Act (Pub. L. 116-17, May 10, 2019) amended the Wildlife Restoration Act to provide administrative advantages for States engaged in acquiring land for, expanding, and constructing public target ranges, and the Modernizing the Pittman-Robertson Fund for Tomorrow's Needs Act (Pub. L. 116-94, December 20, 2019) amended the Wildlife Restoration Act to provide additional eligible activities focused on increasing communication and participation in hunting and recreational shooting. This statutory update also provided the Service the opportunity to consider topics that were left unresolved from the phased approach begun with our 2017-2019 rulemaking process, as well as to incorporate principles established through continued collaborative engagement between the Service, States, and partners into the rulemaking process. On September 30, 2019, the Service issued “Interim Guidance for Applying Public Law 116-17, the Target Practice and Marksmanship Training Support Act, to the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act” (interim guidance; <E T="03">https://www.fws.gov/guidance/sites/guidance/files/documents/WSFR%20Interim%20Guidance%20Implementing%20PL%20116/17-FINAL.pdf</E> ), and on July 14, 2021, the Service issued “Implementing the Modernizing the Pittman-Robertson Fund for Tomorrow's Needs Act” ( <E T="03">https://www.fws.gov/guidance/sites/guidance/files/documents/Implementing_the_Modernizing_the_PittmanRobertson_Act.pdf</E> ). Each of these documents has provided WSFR and States with guidance for how to apply the amendments to the Acts to grants, enhance understanding, and strive for consistency, while we developed proposed updates to the regulations. When published and effective, the final rule for this proposed rule will supersede these guidance documents where there are differences; however, we intend for the guidance documents and any updates to them to continue to provide supplemental information that will assist WSFR and States in administering financial assistance awards. WSFR intends to continue to provi ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 256k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━