Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Revised Designation of Critical Habitat for the Contiguous U.S. Distinct Population Segment of the Canada Lynx

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-R6-ES-2024-0142; FXES1111090FEDR-256-FF09E21000]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BH59</RIN> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Revised Designation of Critical Habitat for the Contiguous U.S. Distinct Population Segment of the Canada Lynx</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 contiguous U.S. distinct population segment (DPS) of the Canada lynx ( <E T="03">Lynx canadensis</E> ) under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended (Act). In total, approximately 19,112 square miles (49,500 square kilometers) in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Washington, and Wyoming fall within the boundaries of the proposed revisions to the critical habitat designation. We also announce the availability of an economic analysis of the proposed revised designation of critical habitat for the Canada lynx DPS. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We will accept comments received or postmarked on or before January 28, 2025. 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 January 28, 2025. </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-R6-ES-2024-0142, 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-R6-ES-2024-0142, 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, such as the species status assessment report addendum, are available on the Service's website at <E T="03">https://ecos.fws.gov/ecp/species/A073?,</E> at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R6-ES-2024-0142, or both. If we finalize the critical habitat designation, we will make the coordinates or plot points or both from which the maps are generated available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R6-ES-2024-0142 and on the Service's website at <E T="03">https://www.fws.gov/species/canada-lynx-lynx-canadensis.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Amity Bass, Field Supervisor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Montana Ecological Services Field Office, 585 Shepard Way, Suite 1, Helena, MT 59601; telephone 406-449-5225. 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-R6-ES-2024-0142 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 the Endangered Species Act (Act), any species that is determined to be threatened or endangered requires critical habitat to be designated to the maximum extent prudent and determinable. Designations and revisions of 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> ). The contiguous U.S. distinct population segment (DPS) of the Canada lynx DPS was listed as a threatened species in 2000. We designated critical habitat for the Canada lynx DPS in 2006 and revised the designation in 2009 and 2014. In 2022, the Service committed in a settlement agreement to submit to the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> a proposed rule on the revised designation of critical habitat for the Canada lynx DPS by November 21, 2024. <E T="03">What this document does.</E> This document proposes to revise the existing designation of critical habitat for the threatened contiguous U.S. DPS of the Canada lynx. Because the Western United States was the subject of a 2016 court order that found fault with our 2014 final critical habitat rule for not designating critical habitat in Colorado and in five National Forests in Idaho and Montana, and because we have new scientific information on lynx habitat in the Western United States, we are proposing to revise Canada lynx critical habitat in the Western United States only. We are not proposing any revisions to critical habitat in Maine and Minnesota. <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 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 of the Interior (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">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 concerning: (1) Specific information on: (a) The amount and distribution of Canada lynx habitat in the Western United States; (b) Any additional areas occurring within the range of the species in the Western United States 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 species 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 species; and (c) 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. (2) Land use designations and current or planned activities in the subject areas and their possible impacts on proposed critical habitat. (3) Any probable economic, national security, or other relevant impacts of designating any area that may be included in the final designation, and the related benefits of including or excluding specific areas. (4) Information on the extent to which the description of probable economic impacts in the draft economic analysis is a reasonable estimate of the likely economic impacts and any additional information regarding probable economic impacts that we should consider. (5) Whether any specific areas we are proposing for critical habitat designation should be considered for exclusion under section 4(b)(2) of the Act, and whether the benefits of potentially excluding any specific area outweigh the benefits of including that area under section 4(b)(2) of the Act. In particular, we are considering excluding all Tribal lands (in Montana and New Mexico) as well as lands in (a) Montana, managed in accordance with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation (DNRC) Forested State Trust Lands Habitat Conservation Plan (Montana DNRC and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 2010, entire), and (b) Washington, managed in accordance with the Washington Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Lynx Habitat Management Plan for DNR-managed Lands (Washington DNR 2006, entire). If you think we should exclude any additional areas, please provide information supporting a benefit of exclusion. (6) Whether we could improve or modify our approach to designating critical habitat in any way to provide for greater public participation and understanding, or to better accommodate public concerns and comments. Please include sufficient information with your submission (such as scientific journal articles or other publications) to allow us to verify any scientific or commercial information you include. Please note that submissions merely stating support f ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 148k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━