Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the Office of Management and Budget for Review and Approval; Application and Reports for Paleontological Permits

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <DEPDOC>[BLM-LLHQ420000.256.L10500000.PC0000.LXSIPALE0000; OMB Control Number 1093-0008]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission to the Office of Management and Budget for Review and Approval; Application and Reports for Paleontological Permits</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of the Secretary, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of information collection; request for comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, we, the Office of the Secretary, are proposing to revise an information collection. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Interested persons are invited to submit comments on or before October 30, 2025. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be sent within 30 days of publication of this notice to <E T="03">www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain.</E> Find this particular information collection by selecting “Currently under Review—Open for Public Comments” or by using the search function. Please provide a copy of your comments to the Departmental Information Collection Clearance Officer (ICCO), 1849 C Street NW, Washington, DC 20240; or by email to <E T="03">DOI-PRA@ios.doi.gov.</E> Please reference Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Control Number 1093-0008 in the subject line of your comments. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jeffrey Parrillo, Departmental ICCO, 1849 C Street, NW Washington, DC 20240; by telephone at 202-208-7072, or by email to <E T="03">DOI-PRA@ios.doi.gov.</E> 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> In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA, 44 U.S.C. 3501 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) and its implementing regulations at 5 CFR 1320.8(d)(1), all information collections require approval under the PRA. We may not conduct or sponsor and you are not required to respond to a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid Office of Management and Budget (OMB) control number. On May 27, 2025, we published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (90 FR 22318) a notice of our intent to request that OMB approve this information collection. In that notice, we solicited comments for 60 days, ending on July 28, 2025. We did not receive any comments in response to that notice. As part of our continuing effort to reduce paperwork and respondent burdens, we invite the public and other Federal agencies to comment on new, proposed, revised, and continuing collections of information. This helps us assess the impact of our information collection requirements and minimize the public's reporting burden. It also helps the public understand our information collection requirements and provide the requested data in the desired format. We are especially interested in public comment addressing the following: (1) Whether or not the collection of information is necessary for the proper performance of the functions of the agency, including whether or not the information will have practical utility; (2) The accuracy of our estimate of the burden for this collection of information, including the validity of the methodology and assumptions used; (3) Ways to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected; and (4) How might the agency minimize the burden of the collection of information on those who are to respond, including through the use of appropriate automated, electronic, mechanical, or other technological collection techniques or other forms of information technology, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> permitting electronic submission of response. Comments that you submit in response to this notice are a matter of public record. We will include or summarize each comment in our request to OMB to approve this ICR. Before including your address, phone number, email address, or other personal identifying information in your comment, you should be aware that your entire comment—including your personal identifying information—may be made publicly available at any time. While you can ask us in your comment to withhold your personal identifying information from public review, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so. <E T="03">Abstract:</E> In 1999, the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee requested that the Department of the Interior (we, DOI), the U.S. Department of Agriculture—Forest Service (USDA-FS), and the Smithsonian Institution prepare a report on fossil resource management on Federal lands (Sen. Rep. 105-227, at 60 (1998)). The request directed these entities to analyze the: • Need for a unified Federal policy for the collection, storage, and preservation of fossils. • Need for standards that would maximize the availability of fossils for scientific study. • Effectiveness of current methods for storing and preserving fossils collected from Federal lands. During the course of preparing the report, the agencies held a public meeting to gather public input. The DOI report to Congress, “Assessment of Fossil Management of Federal and Indian Lands,” was published in May 2000. After the report was released, the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act (PRPA) was introduced in the 107th Congress. PRPA was modeled after the Archaeological Resources Protection Act (ARPA) and emphasized the recommendations and guiding principles in the May 2000 report. The legislation was reintroduced in subsequent Congresses through the 111th Congress when it was included as a subtitle in the Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which became law on March 30, 2009. Legislative history demonstrates that PRPA (16 U.S.C. 470aaa-aaa-11) was enacted to preserve paleontological resources for current and future generations because these resources are nonrenewable and are an irreplaceable part of America's heritage. PRPA requires that implementation be coordinated between the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture and that DOI and USDA-FS issue regulations as appropriate to carry out the law. Accordingly, DOI and USDA-FS formed an interagency coordination team in April 2009 to draft the proposed regulations. Members of the team included program leads for paleontology, archaeology, and regulatory specialists from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the National Park Service (NPS), the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) (the bureaus), and the USDA-FS. Information collected under this control number includes the following: (1) <E T="03">DI Form 9002, “Paleontology Permit Application”</E> (43 CFR 49.115)—Permit applicants proposing to work in areas administered by the BLM, BOR, or USFWS must provide the following information via DI Form 9002: a. Applicant's name, affiliation, and contact information. b. Description of the applicant's qualifications, to include a current resume for the applicant and all other persons who will oversee fieldwork and other work, and information on the applicant's past performance on previous permits. c. Maps and other location information, and estimated start and end dates of proposed work. d. Description, purpose and methodology of proposed work, including a detailed scope of work or research plan for the proposed activity, logistical information, methods that will be employed to explore for or remove the paleontological resources, proposed content and nature of any collection to be made under the permit. e. Information about the proposed repository. f. Description of anticipated costs, including bonding information. (2) <E T="03">DI Form 9003, “Paleontology Permit”</E> (43 CFR 49.125(a))—Interior uses this form to issue the paleontology permit once it is approved. The form does not collect information but provides details concerning the authorized work, as well as the terms and conditions to the permittee. (3) <E T="03">DI Form 9004, “Paleontology Locality Record”</E> (43 CFR 49.125(a)(1) & (6))—Permittee will record locality information on DI Form 9004, 9004-BLM, or in another format approved by the bureau in the permit that captures the same information. Collecting this information forms the basis of the bureau's inventory of paleontological resources, required by statute. (4) <E T="03">DI Form 9006, Reports</E> (43 CFR 49.125(a)(14))—Permittees conducting activities on lands administered by the BLM, BOR, or USFWS must submit reports to the bureaus using DI Form 9006 as a cover sheet. Under some permits, one report may be required summarizing all activities; while other permits may require multiple reports for separate activities under the permit. We use the reports to track and manage the resources and contribute to scientific research. (5) <E T="03">DI Form 9007, Repository Receipt</E> (43 CFR 49.125(a)(10) & (11))—Permittee must deposit the collection in the approved repository named in the permit by the date specified in the permit and provide the bureau with DI Form 9007, which includes a certification by the permittee that the collection and other associated records were transferred to the repository and a certification by the approved repository's authorized official that the collection was received. (6) <E T="03">Resource damage or theft</E> (43 CFR 49.125(a)(7))—Permittee must report suspected or apparent resource damage or theft of paleontological or other resources to the Federal land manager as ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━