Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; 90-Day Findings for Eight Species

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[FXES1111090FEDR-256-FF09E21000]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; 90-Day Findings for Eight Species</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Fish and Wildlife Service, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notification of petition findings and initiation of status reviews. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service), announce 90-day findings on seven petitions to add species to, and one petition to remove a species from, the Lists of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended (Act). Based on our review, we find that the petitions to list the Amargosa toad ( <E T="03">Anaxyrus nelsoni</E> ), Carson Valley monkeyflower ( <E T="03">Erythranthe carsonensis</E> ), large marble butterfly ( <E T="03">Euchloe ausonides</E> ) (including the large marble butterfly type subspecies ( <E T="03">Euchloe ausonides ausonides</E> )), Mohave ground squirrel ( <E T="03">Xerospermophilus mohavensis</E> ), Morrison bumble bee ( <E T="03">Bombus morrisoni</E> ), Oasis Valley population of Amargosa speckled dace ( <E T="03">Rhinichthys nevadensis nevadensis;</E> hereafter referred to as “Oasis Valley speckled dace”), Tennessee bottlebrush crayfish ( <E T="03">Barbicambarus simmonsi</E> ), and one petition to delist the golden-cheeked warbler ( <E T="03">Setophaga chrysoparia</E> ) present substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that the petitioned actions may be warranted. Therefore, with the publication of this document, we announce that we are initiating status reviews of these species to determine whether the petitioned actions are warranted. To ensure that the status reviews are comprehensive, we request scientific and commercial data and other information regarding the species and factors that may affect their status. Based on the status reviews, we will issue 12-month petition findings, which will address whether or not the petitioned actions are warranted, in accordance with the Act. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> WThese findings were made on January 21, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> <E T="03">Supporting documents:</E> Summaries of the basis for the petition findings contained in this document are available on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> under the appropriate docket number (see table 1 under <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> ). In addition, this supporting information is available by contacting the appropriate person, as specified in <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . <E T="03">Status reviews:</E> If you have new scientific or commercial data or other information concerning the status of, or threats to, the Amargosa toad, Carson Valley monkeyflower, golden-cheeked warbler, large marble butterfly (including the large marble butterfly type subspecies), Mohave ground squirrel, Morrison bumble bee, Oasis Valley speckled dace, and Tennessee bottlebrush crayfish, or their habitats, please provide those data or information by one of the following methods listed below. (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 the appropriate docket number (see table 1 under <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> ). Then, click on the “Search” button. After finding the correct document, you may submit information by clicking on “Comment.” If your information will fit in the provided comment box, please use this feature of <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> as it is most compatible with our information review procedures. If you attach your information as a separate document, our preferred file format is Microsoft Word. If you attach multiple comments (such as form letters), our preferred format is a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel. (2) <E T="03">By hard</E> copy: Submit by U.S. mail to: Public Comments Processing, Attn: [Insert appropriate docket number; see table 1 under <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> ], U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, MS: PRB/3W, 5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22041-3803. We request that you send information only by the methods described above. We will post all information we receive on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> This generally means that we will post any personal information you provide us (see <E T="03">Information Submitted for a Status Review,</E> below). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,tp0,i1" CDEF="s50,r150"> <TTITLE> </TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Species common name</CHED> <CHED H="1">Contact person</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Amargosa toad and Oasis Valley speckled dace</ENT> <ENT> Glen Knowles, Field Supervisor, Southern Nevada Fish and Wildlife Office, 702-515-5244, <E T="03">glen_knowles@fws.gov</E> . </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Carson Valley monkeyflower</ENT> <ENT> Kristin Jule, Field Supervisor, Reno Fish and Wildlife Office, 775-861-6337, <E T="03">kristin_jule@fws.gov</E> . </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Golden-cheeked warbler</ENT> <ENT> Michael Warriner, Supervisory Fish and Wildlife Biologist, Austin Ecological Services Field Office, 512-937-7371, <E T="03">michael_warriner@fws.gov</E> . </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Large marble butterfly (including the large marble type subspecies)</ENT> <ENT> Michael Fris, Field Supervisor, Sacramento Fish and Wildlife Office, 916-425-0099, <E T="03">michael_fris@fws.gov</E> . </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Mohave ground squirrel</ENT> <ENT> Scott Sobiech, Field Supervisor, Carlsbad Fish and Wildlife Office, 760-431-9440, <E T="03">scott_sobiech@fws.gov</E> . </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Morrison bumble bee</ENT> <ENT> Shawn Sartorius, Field Supervisor, New Mexico Ecological Services Field Office, 505-761-4781, <E T="03">shawn_sartorius@fws.gov</E> . </ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Tennessee bottlebrush crayfish</ENT> <ENT> Bill Pearson, Field Supervisor, Alabama Ecological Services Field Office, 251-441-5870, <E T="03">bill_pearson@fws.gov</E> . </ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> 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">Information Submitted for a Status Review</HD> You may submit your comments and materials concerning the status of, or threats to, the Amargosa toad, Carson Valley monkeyflower, golden-cheeked warbler, large marble butterfly (including the large marble butterfly type subspecies), Mohave ground squirrel, Morrison bumble bee, Oasis Valley speckled dace, and Tennessee bottlebrush crayfish, or their habitats, 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> . 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. 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 request at the top of your document that we withhold this information from public review. However, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so. We will post all hardcopy submissions on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Comments and materials we receive, as well as supporting documentation we used in preparing these findings, will be available for public inspection on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Section 4 of the Act (16 U.S.C. 1533) and its implementing regulations in title 50 of the Code of Federal Regulations (50 CFR part 424) set forth the procedures for adding species to, removing species from, or reclassifying species on the Federal Lists of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants (Lists or List) in 50 CFR part 17. Section 4(b)(3)(A) of the Act requires that we make a finding on whether a petition to add a species to the List ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> “list” a species), remove a species from the List ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> “delist” a species), or change a listed species' status from endangered to threatened or from threatened to endangered ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> “reclassify” a species) presents substantial scientific or commercial information indicating that the petitioned action may be warranted. To the maximum extent practicable, we are to make this finding within 90 days of our receipt of the petition and publish the finding promptly in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . In 2016, the Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service of the Department of Commerce revised the regulations that outline the procedures for evaluating petitions (81 FR 66462; September 27, 2016). These regulations at 50 CFR 424.14 were effective October 27, 2016. These current regulations establish that substantial scientific or commercial information with regard to a 90-day petition finding refers to credible scientific or commercial information in support of the petition's claims such that a reasonable person conducting an impartial scientific review would conclud ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 43k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━