Endangered and Threatened Species; Designation of Critical Habitat for Five Species of Threatened Indo-Pacific Corals

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Parts 223 and 226</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No: 250709-0123]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BJ52</RIN> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Species; Designation of Critical Habitat for Five Species of Threatened Indo-Pacific Corals</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We, NMFS, designate critical habitat for five threatened Indo-Pacific coral species, <E T="03">Acropora globiceps, A. retusa, A. speciosa, Fimbriaphyllia paradivisa</E> (formerly <E T="03">Euphyllia paradivisa</E> ), and <E T="03">Isopora crateriformis,</E> pursuant to section 4 of the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Final critical habitat includes 18 specific areas encompassing approximately 237 square kilometers (km <SU>2</SU> ; 92 square miles, mi <SU>2</SU> ) of marine habitat in American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Pacific Remote Island Areas, and Hawai'i. We have considered economic, national security, and other relevant impacts of the designations, but are not excluding any areas from the critical habitat designations due to anticipated impacts. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This rule is effective August 14, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The final rule, maps, and Final Information Report and appendices can be found on the NMFS website: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/endangered-species-conservation/critical-habitat#critical-habitat-designations-maps-and-gis-data.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Lance Smith, NMFS, Pacific Islands Regional Office, 808-725-5131, <E T="03">Lance.Smith@noaa.gov;</E> John Rippe, NMFS, Office of Protected Resources, 301-427-8467, <E T="03">John.Rippe@noaa.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> We listed 20 reef coral species as threatened under the ESA on September 10, 2014 (79 FR 53851), 15 of which occur in the Indo-Pacific. The remaining five species occur in the Caribbean. On November 27, 2020, we proposed critical habitat for the seven listed Indo-Pacific species that were then considered to occur within U.S. jurisdiction (85 FR 76262) and the five listed Caribbean species (85 FR 76302). All 20 of these listed coral species have undergone some level of population decline and are susceptible to multiple threats, including ocean warming, diseases, ocean acidification, ecological effects of fishing, and land-based sources of pollution. We determined that these species are likely to become endangered throughout their ranges within the foreseeable future as a result of a combination of threats, the most severe of which are ocean warming and acidification. On August 9, 2023, NMFS finalized critical habitat for the five Caribbean coral species (88 FR 54026). On November 27, 2020, NMFS proposed to designate critical habitat for the seven listed Indo-Pacific corals that were then considered to occur within U.S. jurisdiction ( <E T="03">Acropora globiceps, Acropora jacquelineae, Acropora retusa, Acropora speciosa, Euphyllia paradivisa</E> (renamed <E T="03">Fimbriaphyllia paradivisa,</E> see 89 FR 81867, October 9, 2024), <E T="03">Isopora crateriformis,</E> and <E T="03">Seriatopora aculeata;</E> 85 FR 76262), opened an initial 60-day public comment period that was extended three times to a total of 180 days, held two virtual public hearings, and received approximately 80 public comments. The 2020 proposed rule included specific areas with substrate and water column habitat characteristics essential for the reproduction, recruitment, growth, and maturation of the seven listed coral species. A total of 17 specific areas or “critical habitat units” were proposed to be designated as critical habitat, including 4 units in American Samoa (Tutuila and Offshore Banks, Ofu-Olosega, Ta'u, Rose Atoll), 1 unit in Guam, 7 units in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI; Rota, Aguijan, Tinian, Saipan, Anatahan, Pagan, Maug), and 5 units in the Pacific Remote Island Areas (PRIA; Howland, Palmyra Atoll, Kingman Reef, Johnston Atoll, Jarvis). Based on the best available information at that time, between 1 and 6 listed coral species were thought to occur within each of these 17 critical habitat units. Several other areas were also found to be either ineligible for designation as coral critical habitat, or were proposed to be excluded from the designation due to national security impacts, including the Ritidian Point Surface Danger Zone complex on Guam, the Navy's Submerged Lands around parts of Guam, the Navy's Marine Lease Areas around most of Tinian in CNMI, a group of six Navy anchorage berths on Garapan Bank in Saipan in CNMI, all of Farallon de Medinilla (FDM) in CNMI, and all of Wake Atoll in PRIA. Based on our evaluation of new information provided in the public comments on the 2020 proposed rule as well as other new information that had become available, we concluded that a substantial revision of the proposed rule was needed. Hence, the 2020 proposed rule was withdrawn and a new proposed rule was published on November 30, 2023 (88 FR 83644). The major changes in the 2023 proposed rule from the 2020 proposed rule were: (1) Development of a methodology for using records of listed coral species to determine the occupied areas for critical habitat, the implementation of which led to three additional changes (listed here as numbers 2-4); (2) removal of the units for <E T="03">A. jacquelineae</E> and <E T="03">Seriatopora aculeata</E> from the proposed critical habitat (because current records indicate that the ranges of both species are entirely outside of U.S. waters), thereby reducing the number of species for which critical habitat was being proposed from 7 to 5 species ( <E T="03">Acropora globiceps, A. retusa, A. speciosa, Fimbriaphyllia paradivisa</E> and <E T="03">Isopora crateriformis</E> ); (3) reduction in the number of proposed critical habitat units from 17 to 16, including the elimination of 4 units from the 2020 proposed rule and addition of 3 new units, including 2 in CNMI, and 1 in Hawai'i; (4) reductions in the depth ranges of all Guam and CNMI units (thereby eliminating Garapan Bank on Saipan from consideration for coral critical habitat); (5) more precise delineation of proposed critical habitat within each unit; and (6) denial of the Navy's request for exclusion from coral critical habitat of the Ritidian Point Surface Danger Zone complex on Guam. During the development of the proposed rule, we applied the joint NMFS-U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) implementing regulations (50 CFR 424.12) when evaluating the appropriateness of designating areas outside the geographical area occupied by the listed species as “unoccupied” critical habitat. Among other requirements, those regulations stated that we will only consider unoccupied areas to be essential where a critical habitat designation limited to occupied geographical areas would be inadequate to ensure the conservation of the species (50 CFR 424.12(b)(2)). However, on April 5, 2024, NMFS and the USFWS published a final rule revising those implementing regulations (89 FR 24300). Because those revised regulations became effective on May 6, 2024, we applied them during the development of this final rule. Although our analysis necessarily differed under the 2019 and 2024 regulations, our determination with respect to unoccupied areas did not. This is because regardless of whether we apply the 2019 regulations or current, 2024 regulations, designating an area outside the geographical area occupied by the species at the time of listing as critical habitat requires a determination that the areas themselves are “essential for the conservation of the species” (16 U.S.C. 1532(5)(A)(ii)). Based on the best scientific data available, we have concluded that unoccupied areas are not essential for the conservation of any of the five coral species. This conclusion is consistent with our determination in the 2023 proposed rule, in which we also considered whether our analysis or its conclusion would be any different under the pre-2019 criteria for designating unoccupied areas. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Statutory and Regulatory Background for Critical Habitat Designations</HD> The ESA defines critical habitat under section 3(5)(A) as the (1) 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 essential to the conservation of the species (hereafter also referred to as “PBFs” or “essential features”) and which may require special management considerations or protection; and (2) specific areas outside the geographical area occupied by the species at the time it is listed, upon a determination by the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary) that such areas are essential for the conservation of the species (16 U.S.C. 1532(5)(A)). Conservation is defined in section 3(3) of the ESA as to use, and the use of, all methods and procedures which are necessary to bring any endangered species or threatened species to the point at which the measures provided pursuant to this Act are no longer necessary (16 U.S.C. 1532(3)). Section 3(5)(C) of the ESA provides that, except in those circumstances determined by the Secretary, critical habitat shall not include the entire geographical area which can be occupied by the threatened or endangered species. Our regulations provide that critical habitat shall not be designated within foreign countries or in other areas outside U.S. jurisdiction (50 CFR 424.12 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 186k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━