Service Completes Review of Critical Habitat for 15 Vernal Pool Species; Revises Critical Habitat in Final Rule

Complying with a court order, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) today publishes its revised designation of critical habitat for 15 vernal pool species in California and Oregon. Based on a new, more finely detailed economic analysis, the Service is exempting 23 census tracts in 11 counties that had been proposed or designated as critical habitat where that designation would have the highest costs. Twenty tracts are excluded because housing development in them will incur the highest cost impacts from critical habitat. Those 20 census tracts are in Sacramento, Butte, Placer, Solano, Monterey, Fresno, Stanislaus, Madera and Shasta counties. Two additional tracts are excluded for other significant critical habitat cost factors: a tract in Merced County where the new University of California/Merced campus would incur costs of $10 million, and a tract in Tehama County where the cost of widening Highway 99 would increase by $6 million. Finally, the Placer Vineyards Specific Plan in Placer County overlaps two census tracts, so the second tract also was excluded. If critical habitat had been designated in the 23 tracts, the cost impacts would have reached $740 million