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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 43 / Monday, March 8, 2021 / Rules and Regulations protection and management that benefits the species, even if that benefit is incidental to, and not focused specifically on, Bradshaws lomatium.
Based on all of these considerations, we do not foresee a future in which it is likely that up to 42 percent of sites would be unmanaged or undermanaged, as the commenter suggests.
The largest single population of Bradshaws lomatium plants, located in southwestern Washington, is privately owned, and WDNR continues to actively pursue avenues for the perpetual conservation and management of this site. However, as noted above and as described earlier in this document, even without formal protections, the regular mowing that occurs at this site on a consistent basis year after year has provided for the most vast and robust population of the species known, the owners have voluntarily placed signs to alert the public to the presence of the plant, and the site faces no known threats.
The fact that the majority of Bradshaws lomatium sites are in some form of public or NGO ownership, or under conservation easement or other agreement, gives us confidence that appropriate habitat management is likely to continue into the foreseeable future. The MOU committing to longterm conservation of Bradshaws lomatium on Federal lands regardless of its listing status, recently developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Land Management, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the Service, which collectively own or manage at least 35 of the 71 known Bradshaws lomatium sites, further adds to this confidence Service et al. 2020, entire. As noted above, this MOU did not enter into our consideration of the potential delisting of Bradshaws lomatium. However, it offers further support for our confidence in the strength of the established conservation alliances for the preservation of prairie species and ecosystems in the Willamette Valley, and the likelihood that these efforts are likely to continue.
Monitoring under the post-delisting monitoring plan see our response to Comment 2, below is designed to confirm that appropriate management continues and that degradation of habitat for the species does not follow delisting.
Details about the State of Oregons criteria for delisting plants from the State Endangered Species List can be found in Oregon Administrative Rule OAR 6030730030. Under this OAR, when a plant is removed from the Federal list, it is not automatically removed from the State list, but must
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undergo review if delisting is initiated.
This review process can take years.
Removal from the State list is, therefore, not necessarily imminent. In addition, the habitat protections afforded listed plants by both Federal and State laws are limited. Under the provisions of both the Act and Oregon State law see OAR 6030730090 and Oregon Revised Statute ORS 564.120, listed plants are protected by prohibitions from certain activities for example, cutting, digging, damaging, destroying; transport and sale but nothing in either law requires the maintenance of habitat for listed plants. We, therefore, would not expect State delisting of Bradshaws lomatium to have much practical effect on the maintenance of habitat for the species or protection from habitat degradation.
After the protections of the Act no longer apply, we are planning for a 6year post-delisting monitoring period to ensure Bradshaws lomatiums status does not deteriorate. If a substantial decline in the species numbers of individuals or populations or an increase in threats is detected during that period, we will implement measures to halt the species decline so that re-proposing it as an endangered or threatened species is not needed. The objective of the post-delisting monitoring plan is to verify that Bradshaws lomatium remains secure from the risk of extinction after the protections of the Act have been removed. The plan is specifically designed to detect any significant declines in Bradshaws lomatium populations, should any occur, with reasonable certainty and precision see also our response to Comment 2, below.
Comment 2: One commenter expressed concerns that the draft postdelisting monitoring plan prioritizes monitoring of only 18 sites, or about 25
percent of all known sites, which could leave the status of most sites unknown and possibly allow a serious decline in critical populations to be missed. The commenter recommended including more sites, and choosing those sites based on their recovery value; including smaller, more vulnerable populations that play an important role in terms of species viability redundancy or representation as a priority for monitoring; and prioritizing sites for monitoring that lack management plans or are otherwise at high risk of being threatened following delisting. With regard to some of the smaller populations that are contributing to recovery, the commenter suggested that population trend information be presented in addition to measures of plant abundance.

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In addition, this commenter suggested expedited site visits to additional lower priority sites after delisting. These visits could include collection of data that is informative but less time-consuming to collect, such as identifying whether management is continuing, identifying whether flowering plants are present, photo monitoring, and estimating population size-class.
Our Response: Monitoring a representative subsample of sites as outlined in the draft post-delisting monitoring plan will give us an early indication if declines are occurring or if threats such as habitat degradation are resurgent. Limited resources preclude our ability to completely survey all of the known Bradshaws lomatium sites each year; thus, we endeavored to craft a post-delisting monitoring plan that would effectively capture trends in population size, habitat quality, and management direction across a representative sample of sites.
The 18 priority sites for post-delisting monitoring have been selected to represent the full geographic range of the species, a variety of ownerships informative regarding habitat management; see below, and a range of population sizes. We specifically designed post-delisting monitoring to address whether, and what type of, management has occurred on the site in the previous year, as well as the ownership status of the site, precisely because Bradshaws lomatium is a conservation-reliant species and is so dependent on appropriate habitat management. Conservation programs offered through the Services Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program and various Farm Bill programs administered through the Natural Resources Conservation Service will continue to be available to private landowners for the long-term maintenance and protection of important Bradshaws lomatium populations on private lands after the species is delisted. As described in the post-delisting monitoring plan, a 6-year post-delisting monitoring period will provide time for sites to undergo two to three management cycles, allowing monitoring efforts to identify potential deficiencies in management outcomes.
The sites chosen for monitoring include representation from all of the recovery zones across the range of the species, different land ownerships, and different population sizes ranging from as few as 83 individuals to nearly 75,000. The monitoring history of sites was an important consideration in their selection for post-delisting monitoring;
to the extent possible we chose sites that have already been monitored for long
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