[Federal Register Volume 85, Number 16 (Friday, January 24, 2020)]
[Notices]
[Pages 4336-4338]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2020-01201]
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DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Fish and Wildlife Service
[FWS-R3-ES-2018-N148; FXES11130300000-189-FF03E00000]
Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Draft Recovery
Plan for the Dakota Skipper
AGENCY: Fish and Wildlife Service, Interior.
ACTION: Notice of availability and request for public comment.
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SUMMARY: We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, announce the
availability of the draft recovery plan for the threatened Dakota
skipper for public review and comment. We request review and comment on
this draft recovery plan from local, State, and Federal agencies, and
the public.
DATES: In order to be considered, comments must be received on or
before February 24, 2020.
ADDRESSES:
Document availability: You may obtain a copy of the draft recovery
plan by one of the following methods:
U.S. mail: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Minnesota-
Wisconsin Ecological Services Field Office, Attention: Peter Fasbender;
4101 American Blvd. East, Bloomington, MN 55425.
Telephone: Peter Fasbender, 952-252-0092.
internet: Download the document at the Service's Midwest
Region website at https://www.fws.gov/midwest/Endangered/insects/dask/index.html.
Comment submission: You may submit comments by one of the following
methods:
Mail or hand-delivery: Submit written comments to the
above U.S. mail address.
Fax: 952-646-2873, Attention: Peter Fasbender. Please
include ``Dakota Skipper DRP'' in the subject line.
Email: peter_fasbender@fws.gov. Please include ``Dakota
Skipper DRP'' in the subject line.
For additional information about submitting comments, see
Availability of Public Comments in SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Peter Fasbender, by one of the methods
in ADDRESSES.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
(Service), announce the availability of the draft recovery plan for the
threatened Dakota skipper (Hesperia dacotae) for public review and
comment. The draft recovery plan includes objective, measurable
criteria and management actions as may be necessary for removal of the
species from the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife. We
request review and comment on this draft recovery plan from local,
State, and Federal agencies, and the public.
Recovery Planning
Section 4(f) of the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended
(Act; 16 U.S.C. 1531 et seq.), requires the development of recovery
plans for listed species, unless such a plan would not promote the
conservation of a particular species. Also pursuant to section 4(f) of
the Act, a recovery plan must, to the maximum extent practicable,
include (1) a description of site-specific management actions as may be
necessary to achieve the plan's goals for the conservation and survival
of the species; (2) objective, measurable criteria that, when met,
would support a determination under section 4(a)(1) that the species
should be removed from the List of Endangered and Threatened Species;
and (3) estimates of the time and costs required to carry out those
measures needed to achieve the plan's goal and to achieve intermediate
steps toward that goal.
The Service has revised its approach to recovery planning. The
revised process is intended to reduce the time
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needed to develop and implement recovery plans, increase recovery plan
relevancy over a longer timeframe, and add flexibility to recovery
plans so they can be adjusted to new information or circumstances. A
recovery plan will include statutorily required elements (objective,
measurable criteria, site-specific management actions, and estimates of
time and costs), along with a concise introduction and our strategy for
how we plan to achieve species recovery. The recovery plan is supported
by a separate Species Status Assessment. The essential component to
flexible implementation under this recovery process is producing a
separate working document called the Recovery Implementation Strategy
(implementation strategy). The implementation strategy steps down from
the more general description of actions in the recovery plan to detail
the specific, near-term activities needed to implement the recovery
plan. The implementation strategy will be adaptable by being able to
incorporate new information without having to concurrently revise the
recovery plan, unless changes to statutory elements are required. The
implementation strategy will be developed following publication of the
final recovery plan and will be made available on the Service's website
at that time.
Species Background
The Dakota skipper is a small butterfly with a 1-inch wingspan.
Like other skippers, it has a thick body and faster, more powerful
flight than most butterflies. The Dakota skipper inhabits remnants of
tallgrass prairie and mixed-grass prairie in the north-central United
States and into southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba Provinces of Canada.
Within the native prairie patches where it persists, the species relies
on high-quality habitat conditions--diverse native grassland plant
communities--and on natural or human disturbances that maintain the
integrity of these plant communities while minimizing mortality to
vulnerable life stages. Populations may also be influenced
significantly at local, landscape, regional, and continental scales by
other factors that include activities such as grazing, haying, burning,
pesticide use, and lack of management. (Refer to the Species Status
Assessment Report (USFWS 2018) for a full discussion of the species'
biology and threats.) Under the Act, the Service added the Dakota
skipper as a threatened species to the Federal List of Endangered and
Threatened Wildlife on October 24, 2014 (79 FR 63672).
Recovery Plan
The draft recovery strategy and criteria are summarized below. For
a complete description of these components, as well as the actions and
estimated time and costs associate with recovery, refer to the Draft
Recovery Plan for the Dakota Skipper (see ADDRESSES for document
availability).
Recovery Strategy
To recover the Dakota skipper, we will work with our public,
private, and tribal partners to design and implement actions that will
meet the four goals described below.
1. To ensure that the species' adaptive capacity is preserved,
recovery efforts will focus on maintaining Dakota skipper persistence
across its current range of adaptive variation. We identified four
conservation areas, referred to as Conservation Units (CU), to focus
and manage our recovery efforts.
2. To foster the Dakota skipper's ability to withstand
environmental stochasticity, stressors, and catastrophes, recovery
efforts should ensure that populations are healthy. Those healthy
populations need to be supported by native prairie habitats typified by
plant communities that reflect historical conditions and that contain a
low abundance of non-native species. Recovery actions will also focus
on ensuring that healthy populations are distributed across
heterogeneous conditions within each CU.
3. Successful recovery requires a better understanding of some
fundamental aspects of Dakota skipper ecology. Employing a well-
designed adaptive management and monitoring framework for recovery
implementation will allow us to better manage for suitable habitat
conditions, protect against wide-range and simultaneous population
declines due to environmental stochasticity and catastrophes, and
respond to adverse effects of climate change.
4. Achieving the above goals is highly dependent on the cooperation
and contributions of conservation partners. Specifically, attaining
recovery will necessitate the cooperation and dedication of native
prairie managers, conservationists, ranchers, farmers, agencies, and
those with expertise needed to design and evaluate the effects of land
management actions on the species. It will be critical to ensure that
recovery goals are met in a manner that is in concert with the
missions, objectives, and aspirations of our conservation partners.
Recovery Criteria
The ultimate recovery goal is to remove the Dakota skipper from the
Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife (delist) by ensuring
the long-term viability of the species in the wild. In the recovery
plan, we define the following delisting criteria based on the best
available information on the species:
Criterion 1. A probability of persistence (pP) >= 0.95 over 50
years in each CU. Each CU must also have a minimum of five healthy
populations.
Criterion 2. A minimum of an additional 29 populations with each
having a probability of persistence (pP) >= 0.75 over 50 years and
distributed across CUs as specified in Table 1.
Table 1--The Minimum Number of Populations Required To Meet Criteria 1 and 2
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Number of Number of
Conservation unit populations--Criterion populations--Criterion Number of
1 2 populations
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CU 1: Dry Steppes Ecoregion..................... 5 9 14
CU 2: Steppes Ecoregion......................... 5 6 11
CU 3: Red River Valley Section.................. 5 4 9
CU 4: Prairie Coteau Section.................... 5 10 15
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Criterion 3. Each population considered under Criteria 1 and 2 has
a written management plan in place that promotes population
persistence.
Availability of Public Comments
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
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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.
Authority
The authority for this action is section 4(f) of the Endangered
Species Act, 16 U.S.C. 1533(f).
Lori Nordstrom,
Assistant Regional Director, Ecological Services, Midwest Region.
[FR Doc. 2020-01201 Filed 1-23-20; 8:45 am]
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