Federal Subsistence Management Program; Transfer of Regulations

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE <SUBAGY>Forest Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>36 CFR Part 242</CFR> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Office of the Secretary</SUBAGY> <CFR>43 CFR Part 51</CFR> <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 100</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. DOI-2024-0012; 245D0102DM DS61900000 DMSN00000.000000 DX61901]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1090-AB30</RIN> <SUBJECT>Federal Subsistence Management Program; Transfer of Regulations</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Forest Service, Agriculture; Office of the Secretary, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget, and Fish and Wildlife Service, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This rule transfers the Federal Subsistence Management Program regulations for the Department of the Interior from 50 CFR part 100 to 43 CFR part 51 to align with the transfer of the Office of Subsistence Management from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget. This rule also revises the program's regulations for both the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture to reflect the recent organizational changes and make administrative corrections. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective July 18, 2025. <E T="03">Information Collection Requirements:</E> If you wish to comment on the information collection requirements in this final rule, please submit your comments on or before September 16, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> This final rule and supporting materials are available online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. DOI-2024-0012. <E T="03">Information Collection Requirements:</E> Send your comments on the information collection request 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 1018-0075/1090-New OSM” in the subject line of your comments. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Crystal Leonetti, Acting Director, Office of Subsistence Management; (907) 786-3888 (phone) or <E T="03">subsistence@ios.doi.gov</E> (email). </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> Under title VIII of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) (16 U.S.C. 3111-3126), the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture (Secretaries) jointly implement the Federal Subsistence Management Program (Program). The Program provides a preference for take of fish and wildlife resources for subsistence uses on Federal public lands and waters in Alaska. The term “subsistence uses” means the customary and traditional uses by rural Alaska residents of wild, renewable resources for direct personal or family consumption as food, shelter, fuel, clothing, tools, or transportation or for other specified purposes. The Secretaries established a Federal Subsistence Board to administer the Program, and the Office of Subsistence Management (OSM) provides substantial administrative support to the Board. Because the Program is jointly administered, both the Department of the Interior (DOI, we) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) promulgate regulations governing the Program. Involved DOI agencies include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which historically included OSM, and three other DOI land-managing bureaus, and the USDA involvement pertains to the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Effective July 15, 2024, Secretary of the Interior's Order (Secretary's Order) 3413 transferred OSM from FWS to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget (see <E T="03">https://www.doi.gov/document-library/secretary-order/so-3413-transfer-office-subsistence-management-office-secretary</E> ). Secretary's Order 3413 noted that with the enactment of the Department of the Interior's 2024 appropriations, Congress approved the functional transfer of the Department's Office of Subsistence Management from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the Office of the Secretary. <HD SOURCE="HD1">What This Document Does</HD> This rule transfers DOI's Federal Subsistence Management Program regulations in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) to align with the transfer of OSM from FWS to the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget. Because the Program is jointly administered by DOI and USDA, the Program regulations are located in two titles of the CFR. To date, the Program regulations have been found in title 36, “Parks, Forests, and Public Property,” which contains regulations administered by USDA-USFS, and title 50, “Wildlife and Fisheries,” which contains regulations administered by DOI-FWS. This document transfers the DOI regulations in the CFR from title 50 to title 43, “Public Lands: Interior,” at a new part 51. This rule also revises the Program's regulations for both DOI and USDA to reflect the recent organizational changes. As OSM has been transferred from FWS, this rule replaces certain references to “the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service” in the regulations with references to “the Office of Subsistence Management.” This document also corrects cross-references in the newly transferred regulations and makes non-substantive revisions to correct minor errors. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Conformance With Statutory and Regulatory Authorities</HD> This final rule is administrative in nature and reflects organizational changes within the U.S. Department of the Interior. Accordingly, as this is a matter relating to agency management, pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 553(a)(2), notice of proposed rulemaking and opportunity for comment are not required, and this rule may be made effective less than 30 days after publication in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Therefore, we are making this final rule effective upon publication (see <E T="02">DATES</E> , above). Because this is a rule that is limited to agency organization, this rule is exempt from the provisions of Executive Order 12866 (see section 3(d)(3) of E.O. 12866). This action is not a rule as defined by the Regulatory Flexibility Act (see 5 U.S.C. 601(2)), as amended by the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996 (title II of Pub. L. 104-121, March 29, 1996), and thus is exempt from the provisions of those Acts. Nonetheless, OIRA determined this rule to be not significant on May 9, 2025. In addition, because this rule is a rule of agency organization, procedure, or practice that does not substantially affect the rights or obligations of non-agency parties, it is not included in the definition of “rule” under the Congressional Review Act (see 5 U.S.C. 804(3)). <HD SOURCE="HD2">Paperwork Reduction Act</HD> This final rule includes a request to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to revise an existing information collection (IC) and approve a new IC control number as described below. All ICs require OMB approval under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA; 44 U.S.C. 3501 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ). We may not conduct or sponsor, and you are not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. OMB previously reviewed and approved the information collection requirements associated with subsistence management regulations on public lands in Alaska and assigned the OMB Control Number 1018-0075 (expires March 31, 2027). We are preparing two separate information collection requests (ICRs) for OMB approval in conjunction with the regulatory changes effected by this rule. The first ICR will request OMB approval to move the currently approved information collections from 1018-0075 to a new control number (1090-New) under the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy, Management, and Budget (PMB). A second, simultaneous ICR (requesting a new, separate control number) will request OMB approval to convert certain forms described below (used with the Federal Subsistence Management Program) to become common forms for use by both DOI and USFS. Prior to submitting both ICRs to OMB, we will provide the public with the required 30-day comment period. This 30-day comment period will be announced through the publication of a notice of information collection in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Upon receiving OMB approval of the two ICRs, we will discontinue OMB Control Number 1018-0075, and the USFS will report its burden from the newly designated common forms directly to OMB under the second control number. Additionally, the USFS will prepare an ICR to request OMB approval of a new separate control number (0596-New) for the ICs contained in its regulations at 36 CFR part 242. In conjunction with this rulemaking, we propose three major revisions to the current ICs for OMB approval: <E T="03">(1) REVISION TO SPLIT USFS BURDEN FROM DOI</E> —The currently approved burden under 1018-0075 includes burden for the USFS, which is not allowed under the PRA. The USFS should report its burden separately under its own control number. As part of this submission, we would convert all forms to be common forms managed by DOI under a new, stand-alone control number (see change 3, below). The USFS will submit a request to OMB for approval of a new collection (0596-New) for its burdens from all ICs (not associated with the new common forms) contained in its regulations at 36 CFR part 242. The USFS will also report its burden for its use of the Federal Subsistence Management Program forms as “Requests for Common Forms” for OMB approval. <E T="03">(2) REASSIGNMENT OF EXISTING INFORMATION COLLECTIONS FROM CONTROL NO. 1018-0075 t ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 54k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━