Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Regulations Pertaining to Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR <SUBAGY>Fish and Wildlife Service</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 17</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0029; FXES11130900000-256-FF09E23000]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1018-BI74</RIN> <SUBJECT>Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Regulations Pertaining to Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Interior. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule; request for comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service), propose to revise our regulations concerning protections of threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (Act). We are proposing to remove the “blanket rule” option for protecting newly listed threatened species pursuant to section 4(d) of the Act. The Service intends to create species-specific rules for all threatened species currently protected under the “blanket rule” option. Until such species-specific rules are promulgated, threatened species that receive protections under the “blanket rule” option will continue to receive those protections. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> We will accept comments received or postmarked on or before December 22, 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. </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-HQ-ES-2025-0029, which is the docket number for this rulemaking. Then, click on the Search button. On the resulting page, in the 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-HQ-ES-2025-0029, 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 Public Comments, below, for more information). <E T="03">Availability of supporting materials:</E> Supporting materials are available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> at Docket No. FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0029. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> John Tirpak, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Division of Conservation and Classification; telephone 703-358-2163; <E T="03">john_tirpak@fws.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. Please see Docket No. FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0029 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">Background</HD> The purposes of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended (16 U.S.C. 1531 <E T="03">et seq.</E> (the Act)), are to provide a means to conserve the ecosystems upon which listed species depend, develop a program for the conservation of listed species, and achieve the purposes of certain treaties and conventions (16 U.S.C. 1531(b)). Moreover, it is the policy of Congress that the Federal Government will seek to conserve endangered and threatened species and use its authorities to further the purposes of the Act (16 U.S.C. 1531(c)(1)). This proposed rulemaking action pertains to section 4 of the Act. Section 4 of the Act (16 U.S.C. 1533) and the regulations in title 50 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) set forth the procedures for determining whether a species is an endangered species or a threatened species, issuing protective regulations for threatened species, and designating critical habitat for endangered and threatened species. Section 9 of the Act provides a specific list of prohibitions for endangered species that are applicable automatically at the time of listing, but does not provide these same or comparable prohibitions automatically to threatened species. Instead, section 4(d) of the Act requires that whenever a species is listed as a threatened species the Secretary shall issue regulations that are necessary and advisable to provide for the conservation of the species and also may by regulation prohibit with respect to any threatened species any act prohibited under section 9 for an endangered species; these are referred to as “4(d) rules.” Congress delegated to the Secretary the authority to determine what protections each threatened species should receive. Early in the administration of the Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“the Service”) promulgated “blanket rules,” at 50 CFR 17.31 and 17.71, respectively. Pursuant to these blanket rules, as soon as a species was listed as threatened, nearly all the section 9 prohibitions that apply to endangered species would automatically apply to threatened species, unless the Service issued an alternative rule for that species ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> a species-specific rule). In those instances when we issued a species-specific rule for a species, that species-specific 4(d) rule contained the protective regulations for that species. On August 27, 2019, we issued a final rule that revised 50 CFR 17.31 and 17.71 (84 FR 44753; hereafter, “the 2019 4(d) rule”) and removed the “blanket rule” option for applying section 9 prohibitions to species newly listed as threatened after the effective date of those regulatory revisions (September 26, 2019). The “blanket rule” protections continued to apply to threatened species without an associated species-specific rule that were listed prior to September 26, 2019. Under the 2019 4(d) rule, we applied protections to a species newly listed as threatened only through issuance of a species-specific rule setting out the protective regulations that are necessary and advisable for that species. On April 5, 2024, we reinstated the “blanket rule” option at 50 CFR 17.31 and 17.71 for newly listed threatened species and finalized several other revisions to 50 CFR part 17 (89 FR 23919; hereafter, “the 2024 rule”). Those 2024 revised regulations became effective on May 6, 2024. The 2024 rule is subject to pending litigation in <E T="03">Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation et al.</E> v. <E T="03">U.S. Fish and Wildlife Serv. et al.;</E> 2:25-cv-00029-KLD (D. Mont.) and <E T="03">American Farm Bureau Federation et al.</E> v. <E T="03">U.S. Fish and Wildlife Serv. et al.;</E> 1:25-cv-00947 (D.D.C.). Prior litigation over the 2019 4(d) rule was not resolved on the merits; rather, on November 16, 2022, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California issued orders remanding the 2019 4(d) rule to the Service without vacating it, as the Service had voluntarily asked the Court to do. Soon after, the Service developed the 2024 rule. Executive Order (E.O.) 14154, “Unleashing American Energy,” issued January 20, 2025, directed all departments and agencies to review agency actions that impose an undue burden on the identification, development, or use of domestic energy resources, and, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, consider suspending, revising, or rescinding agency actions that conflict with this national objective. To administer provisions of E.O. 14154, the Secretary of the Interior subsequently issued Secretary's Order (S.O.) 3418, which directed Assistant Secretaries to take steps, as appropriate, to suspend, revise, or rescind multiple actions that had been finalized under the prior Administration. The S.O. specifically referenced taking these steps with respect to the 2024 rule. E.O. 14219, “Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President's `Department of Government Efficiency' Deregulatory Initiative,” issued February 19, 2025, also directs all departments and agencies to review and rescind unlawful regulations that are “based on anything other than the best reading of the underlying statutory authority.” <E T="03">See also Loper Bright Enterprises</E> v. <E T="03">Raimondo,</E> 603 U.S. 369 (2024). The Secretaries of the Interior and Commerce share responsibilities for administering most of the provisions of the Act. Generally, marine species and some anadromous (sea-run) species are under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of Commerce, and all other species are under the jurisdiction of the Secretary of the Interior. Authority to administer the Act has been delegated by the Secretary of the Interior to the Director of the Service and by the Secretary of Commerce to the Assistant Administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). The Service and NMFS (jointly “the Services”) separately implementadministration section 4(d) for species within their respective jurisdictions. When we amended our section 4(d) regulations in 2019, and again in 2024, those amendments affected only species under Service jurisdiction. This proposal, if finalized, would similarly affect only species under Service jurisdiction. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Regulatory Revisions</HD> We propose revisions to the regulations in 50 CFR part 17, subparts D and G. Section 4(d) of the Act gives the Secretary the authority and discretion to develop and revise regulations for prote ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 33k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━