Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Designation of Critical Habitat for the San Francisco Bay-Delta Distinct Population Segment of the Longfin Smelt

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-R8-ES-2024-0131; FXES1111090FEDR-256-FF09E21000]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BH71</RIN> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Designation of Critical Habitat for the San Francisco Bay-Delta Distinct Population Segment of the Longfin Smelt</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 designate critical habitat for the San Francisco Bay-Delta distinct population segment (DPS) of the longfin smelt ( <E T="03">Spirinchus thaleichthys</E> ), a fish species from the San Francisco Bay estuary in California, under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended (Act). In total, approximately 91,630 acres (37,082 hectares) in California fall within the boundaries of the proposed critical habitat designation. We also announce the availability of an economic analysis of the proposed designation of critical habitat for the species. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We will accept comments received or postmarked on or before March 17, 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 March 3, 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-R8-ES-2024-0131, 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-R8-ES-2024-0131, 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 and 100-word summary of this proposed rule, are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-R8-ES-2024-0131. For the proposed 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-R8-ES-2024-0131. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Donald Ratcliff, Field Supervisor, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, San Francisco Bay-Delta Fish and Wildlife Office, 650 Capitol Mall Suite 8-300, Sacramento, CA 95814; telephone 916-930-5603. 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-R8-ES-2024-0131 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 Act, a determination that a species is endangered or threatened requires that we must designate the species' critical habitat to the maximum extent prudent and determinable. We published a final rule in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> listing the San Francisco Bay-Delta distinct population segment (DPS) of the longfin smelt ( <E T="03">Spirinchus thaleichthys</E> ) (Bay-Delta longfin smelt) as an endangered species on July 30, 2024 (89 FR 61029). We are now proposing to designate its critical habitat. Making a 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> We propose to designate critical habitat for the San Francisco Bay-Delta DPS of the longfin smelt ( <E T="03">Spirinchus thaleichthys</E> ). <E T="03">The basis for our action.</E> Section 4(a)(3) of the Act requires that the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary), to the maximum extent prudent and determinable, designate critical habitat for listed 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">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) Biological or ecological requirements of the Bay-Delta longfin smelt, including habitat requirements for feeding, breeding, rearing, and sheltering; (b) The amount and distribution of the Bay-Delta longfin smelt's habitat; (c) Any additional areas occurring within the range of the species in the San Francisco Bay estuary ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Petaluma River, South San Francisco Bay) and ocean areas outside the Golden Gate, that should be included in the designation because the areas (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; (d) 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. If you think we should exclude any 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 for, or opposition to, the action under consideration without providing supporting information, although noted, do not provide substantial information necessary to support a determination. Section 4(b)(2) of the Act directs that the Secretary shall designate critical habitat on the basis of the best scientific data available. You may submit your comments and materials concerning this proposed rule by one of the methods listed in <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> . We request that you send comments only by the methods described in <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> . If you submit information via <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> your entire submission—including any personal identifying information—will be posted on the website. If your submission is made via a hardcopy that includes personal identifying information, you may re ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 124k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━