Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Removal of Virginia Sneezeweed From the List of Endangered and Threatened Plants

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-R5-ES-2024-0058; FXES1113090FEDR-256-FF09E22000]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BF57</RIN> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Removal of Virginia Sneezeweed From the List of Endangered and Threatened Plants</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 remove Virginia sneezeweed ( <E T="03">Helenium virginicum</E> ) from the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Plants. Our review indicates that the threats to Virginia sneezeweed have been eliminated or reduced to the point that the species no longer meets the definition of an endangered or threatened species under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended (Act). Accordingly, we propose to delist Virginia sneezeweed. If we finalize this rule as proposed, the prohibitions and conservation measures provided by the Act, particularly through sections 7 and 9, would no longer apply to Virginia sneezeweed. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We will accept comments received or postmarked on or before October 6, 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 September 19, 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-R5-ES-2024-0058, which is the docket number for this rulemaking. Then, click on the Search button. On the resulting page, in the Search 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-R5-ES-2024-0058, 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> This proposed rule and supporting documents, including the 5-year review and the draft Recovery Plan, are available online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> under Docket No. FWS-R5-ES-2024-0058 and on the Service's Northeast Region website at <E T="03">https://www.fws.gov/species/virginia-sneezeweed-helenium-virginicum,</E> and in person at the Virginia Field Office (see <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> ). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Troy Andersen, Field Office Supervisor, Virginia Field Office, 6669 Short Lane, Gloucester, VA 23061; telephone: 804-728-0695. 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-R5-ES-2024-0058 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">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 concerned governmental agencies, Native American tribes, the scientific community, industry, or any other interested parties concerning this proposed rule. We particularly seek comments concerning: (1) Reasons we should or should not remove Virginia sneezeweed from the List of Endangered and Threatened Plants; (2) Relevant data concerning any threats (or lack thereof) to Virginia sneezeweed, particularly any data on the possible effects of climate change as it relates to habitat, as well as the extent of State protection and management that would be provided to this plant as a delisted species; (3) Current or planned activities within the geographic range of Virginia sneezeweed that may have either a negative or positive impact on the species; and (4) Considerations for post-delisting monitoring, including monitoring protocols and length of time monitoring is needed, as well as triggers for reevaluation. 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)(1)(A) of the Act directs that determinations as to whether any species is an endangered species or a threatened species must be made solely on the basis of the best scientific and commercial 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 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> Our final determination may differ from this proposal because we will consider all comments we receive during the comment period as well as any information that may become available after this proposal. For example, based on the new information we receive (and any comments on that new information), we may conclude that the species should remain listed as threatened, or we may conclude that the species should be reclassified from threatened to endangered. We will clearly explain our rationale and the basis for our final decision, including why we made changes, if any, that differ from this proposal. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Public Hearing</HD> Section 4(b)(5) of the Act (16 U.S.C. 1533(b)(5)) provides for a public hearing on this proposal, if requested. Requests must be received by the date specified above in <E T="02">DATES</E> . Such requests must be sent to the address shown in <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . We will schedule a public hearing on this proposal, if requested, and announce the date, time, and place of the hearing, as well as how to obtain reasonable accommodations, in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> and local newspapers at least 15 days before the hearing. We may hold the public hearing in person or virtually via webinar. We will announce any public hearing on our website, in addition to the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . The use of these virtual public hearings is consistent with our regulation at 50 CFR 424.16(c)(3). <HD SOURCE="HD2">Peer Review</HD> In accordance with our joint policy on peer review published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on July 1, 1994 (59 FR 34270), and our August 22, 2016, memorandum updating and clarifying the role of peer review of listing actions under the Act, we will seek independent scientific reviews from at least three appropriate and independent specialists regarding scientific data and interpretations contained in this proposed rule. We will send copies of this proposed rule to the peer reviewers immediately following publication in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . We will ensure that the opinions of peer reviewers are objective and unbiased by following the guidelines set forth in the August 22, 2016, memorandum, which updates and clarifies Service policy on peer review (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 2016). The purpose of such review is to ensure that our decisions are based on scientifically sound data, assumptions, and analysis. Accordingly, our final decision may differ from this proposal. Comments from peer reviewers will be posted at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and included in the decision file for the final rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Previous Federal Actions</HD> On November 28, 1983, we published a notice of review in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (48 FR 53640) covering all native plants being considered for listing as endangered or threatened; we included Virginia sneezeweed in this notice as a category 2 candidate species. We defined category 2 candidates as those taxa for which we had information indicating that listing may be warranted but for which we lacked sufficient information on status and threats to support issuance of proposed listing rules. We retained Virginia sneezeweed as a category 2 candidate species in 1985 (50 FR 39526; September ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 91k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━