Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Revised Draft Recovery Plan for the Coterminous United States Population of Bull Trout and Draft Recovery Unit Implementation Plans

We, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service), announce the availability of six draft recovery unit implementation plans (RUIPs) that are part of the recovery plan we are developing for the coterminous United States population of bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus). On September 4, 2014, we announced the availability of the Revised Draft Recovery Plan for the Coterminous United States Population of Bull Trout, along with a 90-day comment period. While the revised draft recovery plan proposed the specific goals, objectives, and criteria that should be met to remove the species from the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife, the principal conservation actions needed to advance the recovery of bull trout had not yet been developed. We have been working through an interagency collaboration of interested and knowledgeable Federal, Tribal, State, private, and other parties to develop individual draft RUIPs that propose site-specific conservation actions for each of six recovery units (Coastal, Klamath, Mid-Columbia, Columbia Headwaters, Upper Snake, and St. Mary). Based on comments received on the revised draft recovery plan, we are also proposing a modification to the recovery criteria for the Columbia Headwaters Recovery Unit. We consider this a substantive change to the current revised draft recovery plan. We request review and comment on the draft RUIPs and recovery criteria modifications from Federal, State and local agencies, Native American Tribes, and the public.