The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service propose to amend the regulations governing consultation under section 7 of the Endangered Species Act regarding incidental take statements. The purpose of the proposed changes is to address the use of surrogates to express the amount or extent of anticipated incidental take, and incidental take statements for programmatic actions where implementation of the program requires later authorization, funding, or implementation of site-specific actions that will be subject to section 7 consultation and incidental take statements, as appropriate. These changes are proposed to improve the flexibility and clarify the development of incidental take statements. The Services believe these proposed regulatory changes are a reasonable exercise of their discretion in interpreting particularly challenging aspects of section 7 of the ESA related to incidental take statements. The Services will accept comments received or postmarked on or before November 4, 2013.
Click here to read Services’ Federal Register notice of proposed rules.
