Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Review of Species That Are Candidates for Listing as Endangered or Threatened; Annual Notification of Findings on Resubmitted Petitions; Annual Description of Progress on Listing Actions

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-HQ-ES-2023-0246; FF09E22000-256-FXES11130900000FEDR]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Review of Species That Are Candidates for Listing as Endangered or Threatened; Annual Notification of Findings on Resubmitted Petitions; Annual Description of Progress on Listing Actions</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Fish and Wildlife Service, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notification of review. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this candidate notice of review (CNOR), we, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service or FWS), present an updated list of plant and animal species that we regard as candidates for or have proposed for addition to the Lists of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended. This document also includes our findings on resubmitted petitions and describes our progress in revising the Lists of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants (Lists) during the period October 1, 2022, through September 30, 2024. Combined with other decisions for individual species that were published separately from this CNOR in the past two years, the current number of species that are candidates for listing or uplisting is 16 (as of September 30, 2024). Identification of candidate species can assist environmental planning efforts by providing advance notice of potential listings, and by allowing landowners, resource managers, States, Tribes, range countries, and other stakeholders to take actions to alleviate threats and thereby possibly remove the need to list species as endangered or threatened. Even if we subsequently list a candidate species, the early notice provided here could result in more options for species management and recovery by prompting earlier candidate conservation measures to alleviate threats to the species. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We are publishing this document on October 31, 2025. We will accept information on any of the species in this document at any time. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> This document is available on the internet at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and <E T="03">https://www.fws.gov/library/collections/candidate-notice-review</E> . Species assessment forms with information and references on a particular candidate species' range, status, habitat needs, and listing priority assignment are available for review on our website ( <E T="03">https://ecos.fws.gov/tess_public/reports/candidate-species-report</E> ). Please submit any new information, materials, comments, or questions of a general nature on this document to the address listed under <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> . Please submit any new information, materials, comments, or questions pertaining to a particular species to the address of the Regional Director or Branch Chief in the appropriate office listed under Request for Information in <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> . <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For foreign species: Rachel London, Manager, Branch of Delisting and Foreign Species, Ecological Services Program, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, MS: ES, 5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22041-3803; telephone 703-358-1961. For domestic species: Caitlin Snyder, Chief, Branch of Domestic Listing, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, MS: ES, 5275 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church, VA 22041-3803 (telephone: 703-358-1961). 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">Background</HD> The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Act; 16 U.S.C. 1531 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), as amended, requires that we identify species of wildlife and plants that are endangered or threatened based solely on the best scientific and commercial data available. As defined in section 3 of the Act, an endangered species is any species that is in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range, and a threatened species is any species that is likely to become an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range. Through the Federal rulemaking process, we add species that meet these definitions to the List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife in title 50 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) at § 17.11 (50 CFR 17.11) or the List of Endangered and Threatened Plants at 50 CFR 17.12. As part of this process, we maintain a list of species that we regard as candidates for listing. A candidate species is one for which we have on file sufficient information on biological vulnerability and threats to support a proposal for listing as endangered or threatened, but for which preparation and publication of a proposal is precluded by higher priority listing actions. We may identify a species as a candidate for listing after we have conducted an evaluation of its status—either on our own initiative, or in response to a petition we have received. If we have made a finding on a petition to list a species and have found that listing is warranted but precluded by other higher priority listing actions, we will add the species to our list of candidates. We maintain this list of candidates for a variety of reasons: (1) To notify the public that these species are facing threats to their survival; (2) to provide advance knowledge of potential listings that could affect decisions of environmental planners and developers; (3) to provide information that may stimulate and guide conservation efforts that will remove or reduce threats to these species and possibly make listing unnecessary; (4) to request input from interested parties to help us identify those candidate species that may not require protection under the Act, as well as additional species that may require the Act's protections; and (5) to request necessary information for setting priorities for preparing listing proposals. We encourage collaborative conservation efforts for candidate species and offer technical and financial assistance to facilitate such efforts. For additional information regarding such assistance, please contact the appropriate Office listed under Request for Information, below, or visit our website at: <E T="03">https://www.fws.gov/program/endangered-species/what-we-do</E> . <HD SOURCE="HD1">Previous CNORs</HD> We have been publishing CNORs since 1975. The most recent was published on June 27, 2023 (88 FR 41560). CNORs published since 1994 are available on our website at <E T="03">https://www.fws.gov/library/collections/candidate-notice-review.</E> For copies of CNORs published prior to 1994, please contact the Branch of Delisting and Foreign Species or the Branch of Domestic Listing (see <E T="02">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT</E> , above). On September 21, 1983, we published guidance for assigning a listing priority number (LPN) for each candidate species (48 FR 43098). Using this guidance, we assign each candidate an LPN of 1 to 12, depending on the magnitude of threats, immediacy of threats, and taxonomic status; the lower the LPN, the higher the listing priority (that is, a species with an LPN of 1 would have the highest listing priority). Section 4(h)(3) of the Act (16 U.S.C. 1533(h)(3)) requires the Secretary to establish guidelines for such a priority-ranking system. As explained below, in using this system, we first categorize based on the magnitude of the threat(s), then by the immediacy of the threat(s), and finally by taxonomic status. Under this priority-ranking system, magnitude of threat can be either “high” or “moderate to low.” This criterion helps ensure that the species facing the greatest threats to their continued existence receive the highest listing priority. All candidate species face threats to their continued existence, so the magnitude of threats is in relative terms. For all candidate species, the threats are of sufficiently high magnitude to put them in danger of extinction or make them likely to become in danger of extinction in the foreseeable future. However, for species with higher magnitude threats, the threats have a greater likelihood of bringing about extinction or are expected to bring about extinction on a shorter timescale (once the threats are imminent) than for species with lower magnitude threats. Because we do not routinely quantify how likely or how soon extinction would be expected to occur absent listing, we must evaluate factors that contribute to the likelihood and time scale for extinction. We, therefore, consider information such as: (1) The number of populations or extent of range of the species affected by the threat(s), or both; (2) the biological significance of the affected population(s), taking into consideration the life-history characteristics of the species and its current abundance and distribution; (3) whether the threats affect the species in only a portion of its range, and, if so, the likelihood of persistence of the species in the unaffected portions; (4) the severity of the effects and the rapidity with which they have caused or are likely to cause mortality to individuals and accompanying declines in population levels; (5) whether the effects are likely to be permanent; and (6) the extent to which any ongoing conservation efforts reduce the severity of the threat(s). As used in our priority-ranking system, immediacy of threat is categorized as either “im ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 182k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━