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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 103 / Tuesday, June 1, 2021 / Proposed Rules
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leases will not be allowed within 2.4 km 1.5 mi of a lek BLM 2008, p. 11.
We conclude that existing regulatory mechanisms have minimal influence on the rangewide trends of lesser prairiechicken habitat loss and fragmentation because 97 percent of the lesser prairiechicken analysis area occurs on private lands, and the activities affecting lesser prairie-chicken habitat are largely unregulated land use practices and land development.
Conservation Efforts The SSA report also includes detailed information on current conservation measures Service 2021, pp. 4961.
Some programs are implemented across the species range, and others are implemented at the State or local level.
Because the vast majority of lesser prairie-chicken and their habitat occurs on private lands, most of these programs are targeted toward voluntary, incentive-based actions in cooperation with private landowners.
At the rangewide scale, plans include the Lesser Prairie-Chicken Rangewide Conservation Plan, the Lesser PrairieChicken Initiative, and the Conservation Reserve Program. Below is a summary of the primary rangewide conservation efforts. For detailed descriptions of each program, please see the SSA report. All existing ongoing conservation efforts were fully considered in our finding on the status of the two DPSs.
In 2013, the State fish and wildlife agencies within the range of the lesser prairie-chicken and the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies WAFWA finalized the Lesser Prairie-Chicken Range-wide Conservation Plan RWP in response to concerns about threats to lesser prairiechicken habitat and resulting effects to lesser prairie-chicken populations Van Pelt et al. 2013, entire. The RWP
established biological goals and objectives as well as a conservation targeting strategy that aims to unify conservation efforts towards common goals. Additionally, the RWP establishes a mitigation framework administered by WAFWA that allows industry participants the opportunity to mitigate unavoidable impacts of a particular activity on the lesser prairie-chicken.
After approval of the RWP, WAFWA
developed a companion oil and gas candidate conservation agreement with assurances CCAA, which adopted the mitigation framework contained within the RWP that was approved in 2014.
As of August 1, 2020, WAFWA had used incoming funds from industry participants to place 22 sites totaling 128,230 unimpacted ac 51,893 ha under conservation contracts to provide
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offset for industry impacts that have occurred through the RWP and CCAA
Moore 2020, p. 9. These areas are enrolled under RWP conservation contracts that will provide mitigation for 1,538 projects, which impacted 48,743 ac 19,726 ha WAFWA 2020, table 32, unpaginated. When enrolling a property, industry participants agree to minimize impacts from projects to lesser prairie-chicken habitat and mitigate for all remaining impacts on the enrolled property. At the end of 2019 in the CCAA, there were 111 active contracts Certificates of Inclusion with 6,228,136 ac 2,520,437 ha enrolled Moore 2020, p. 4, and in the WAFWA
Conservation Agreement there were 52
active WAFWA Conservation Agreement contracts Certificates of Participation with 599,626 ac 242,660
ha enrolled WAFWA 2020, Table 5
unpaginated. A recent audit of the mitigation program associated with the RWP and CCAA identified several key issues to be resolved within the program to ensure financial stability and effective conservation outcomes Moore 2020, Appendix E. WAFWA has hired a consultant who is currently working with stakeholders, including the Service, to consider available options to address the identified issues to ensure long-term durability of the strategy.
In 2010, the U.S. Department of Agricultures USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service NRCS began implementation of the Lesser PrairieChicken Initiative LPCI. The LPCI
provides conservation assistance, both technical and financial, to landowners throughout the LPCIs administrative boundary NRCS 2017, p. 1. The LPCI
focuses on maintenance and enhancement of lesser prairie-chicken habitat while benefiting agricultural producers by maintaining the farming and ranching operations throughout the region. In 2019, after annual declines in landowner interest in LPCI, the NRCS
made changes in how LPCI will be implemented moving forward and initiated conferencing under section 7 of the ESA with the Service. Prior to 2019, participating landowners had to address all threats to the lesser prairie-chicken present on their property. In the future, each conservation plan developed under LPCI will only need to include one or more of the core management practices that include prescribed grazing, prescribed burning, brush management, and upland wildlife habitat management. Additional management practices may be incorporated into each conservation plan, as needed, to facilitate meeting the desired objectives.
These practices are applied or
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maintained annually for the life of the practice, typically 1 to 15 years, to treat or manage habitat for lesser prairiechicken. From 2010 through 2019, NRCS worked with 883 private agricultural producers to implement conservation practices on 1.6 million ac 647,497 ha of working lands within the historical range of the lesser prairiechicken NRCS 2020, p. 2. During that time, through LPCI, NRCS implemented prescribed grazing plans on 680,800 ac 275,500 ha across the range Griffiths 2020, pers. comm.. Through LPCI, NRCS has also removed over 41,000 ac 16,600 ha of eastern red cedar in the Mixed-Grass Ecoregion and chemically treated approximately 106,000 ac 43,000 ha of mesquite in the Shinnery Oak Ecoregion. Lastly, NRCS has conducted prescribed burns on approximately 15,000 ac 6,000 ha during this time.
The Conservation Reserve Program CRP is administered by the USDAs Farm Service Agency and provides short-term protection and conservation benefits on millions of acres within the range of the lesser prairie-chicken. The CRP is a voluntary program that allows eligible landowners to receive annual rental payments and cost-share assistance in exchange for removing cropland and certain marginal pastureland from agricultural production. CRP contract terms are for 10 to 15 years. The total amount of land that can be enrolled in the CRP is capped nationally by the Food Security Act of 1985, as amended the 2018 Farm Bill at 27 million ac 10.93 million ha.
All five States within the range of the lesser prairie-chicken have lands enrolled in the CRP. The 2018 Farm Bill maintains the acreage limitation that not more than 25 percent of the cropland in any county can be enrolled in CRP, with specific conditions under which a waiver to this restriction can be provided for lands enrolled under the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program 84 FR 66813, December 6, 2019. Over time, CRP enrollment fluctuates both nationally and locally.
Within the counties that intersect the Estimated Occupied Range plus a 10mile buffer, acres enrolled in CRP have declined annually since 2007 with the exception of one minor increase from 2010 to 2011 from nearly 6 million ac 2.4 million ha enrolled to current enrollment levels of approximately 4.25
million ac 1.7 million ha FSA 2020a, unpublished data. More specific to our analysis area, current acreage of CRP
enrollment is approximately 1,822,000
ac 737,000 ha within our analysis area.
Of those currently enrolled acres there
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