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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 103 / Tuesday, June 1, 2021 / Proposed Rules
future. Habitat loss is projected to outpace conservation efforts to restore habitat. Though we do not expect rates of habitat conversion to cropland to be equivalent to the rates that we historically witnessed, we expect any additional conversion that does occur will have a disproportionately large effect on resiliency and redundancy due to the limited amount of remaining large intact grasslands. Conversion of habitat due to oil, gas, and wind energy will continue to occur, though the rates of development are uncertain. Woody vegetation encroachment is also expected to continue, particularly in the Mixed-Grass Ecoregion. Increased drought and severe weather events associated with climate change are expected to decrease population resiliency and redundancy into the foreseeable future, and as habitat availability continues to decline, and available habitat blocks decrease in size, populations may decline to below quasiextinction levels. Our future scenarios project that usable habitat will decrease from 325 percent within the Northern DPS 524 percent in the Short-Grass/
CRP Ecoregion, from 237 percent in the Mixed-Grass Ecoregion, and from 314
percent in the Sand Sagebrush Ecoregion due to projected impacts from conversion to cropland, energy development, and woody vegetation encroachment.
Conservation measures and regulatory mechanisms are acting to reduce the magnitude of threats impacting the lesser prairie-chicken and its habitat.
However, our analysis demonstrates that future restoration efforts will not be enough to offset the impacts of habitat loss and fragmentation and conservation efforts focused on localized management to affect habitat quality, while not addressing the overarching limiting factor of habitat loss and fragmentation, is not addressing the long-term population needs for the lesser prairie-chicken. Thus, these measures are having only minimal impacts on threats acting throughout the DPS.
After evaluating threats to the species and assessing the cumulative effect of the threats under the section 4a1
factors, we find that the lesser prairiechicken maintains populations in all three ecoregions in the Northern DPS, and has genetic and ecological representation in those ecoregions, as well as population redundancy across the entirety of the DPS. Thus, lesser prairie-chicken in the Northern DPS are not currently in danger of extinction, and thus the Northern DPS does not meet the definition of endangered.
However, based on our future
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projections, habitat will become increasingly fragmented and less able to support lesser prairie-chickens. Thus, after assessing the best available information, we conclude that the Northern DPS of the lesser prairiechicken is not currently in danger of extinction but is likely to become in danger of extinction within the foreseeable future throughout all of its range.
Status of the Northern DPS of the Lesser Prairie-Chicken Throughout a Significant Portion of Its Range Under the Act and our implementing regulations, a species may warrant listing if it is in danger of extinction or likely to become so in the foreseeable future throughout all or a significant portion of its range. The court in Center for Biological Diversity v. Everson, 2020
WL 437289 D.D.C. Jan. 28, 2020
Everson, vacated the aspect of the 2014
Significant Portion of its Range Policy that provided that the Services do not undertake an analysis of significant portions of a species range if the species warrants listing as threatened throughout all of its range. Therefore, we proceed to evaluating whether the species is endangered in a significant portion of its rangethat is, whether there is any portion of the species range for which both 1 the portion is significant; and 2 the species is in danger of extinction in that portion.
Depending on the case, it might be more efficient for us to address the significance question or the status question first. We can choose to address either question first. Regardless of which question we address first, if we reach a negative answer with respect to the first question that we address, we do not need to evaluate the other question for that portion of the species range.
We apply the term significant differently for the purpose of the significant portion of the range analysis than the DPS analysis. The DPS
Policy requires that for a vertebrate population to meet the Acts definition of species, the population must be discrete from other populations and must be significant to the taxon as a whole. The use of significant to the taxon as a whole under the DPS Policy is necessarily broad. Notably, a segment could be significant to the taxon as a whole for the DPS policy but not be significant for the different analysis under the Significant Portion of Its Range Policy. Thus, a determination that an area is significant for the purposes of DPS does not necessarily mean that it will be significant for the purposes of the Significant Portion of Its Range Policy.

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Following the courts holding in Center for Biological Diversity, we now consider whether there are any significant portions of the species range where the species is in danger of extinction now i.e., endangered. In undertaking this analysis for the Northern DPS of the lesser prairiechicken, we choose to address the status question firstwe consider information pertaining to the geographic distribution of both the species and the threats that the species faces to identify any portions of the range where the species is endangered. We evaluated all parts of the Northern DPS, including the Sand Sagebrush Ecoregion, the Mixed Grass Ecoregion, and the Short Grass/CRP
Ecoregion. We identified one portion, the Sand Sagebrush Ecoregion, that may meet the definition of endangered, as population estimates have shown the greatest declines in that portion of the range.
For the Northern DPS, we considered whether the threats are geographically concentrated in any portion of the species range at a biologically meaningful scale. We examined the following threats: Effects associated with habitat degradation, loss, and fragmentation, including conversion of grassland to cropland, petroleum production, wind energy development and transmission, woody vegetation encroachment, and roads and electrical distribution lines; other factors, such as livestock grazing, shrub control and eradication, collision mortality from fences, predation, influence of anthropogenic noise, and fire; extreme weather events, including cumulative effects. However, we did not identify any threats that were concentrated in the Sand Sagebrush Ecoregion that were not at similar levels in the remainder of the range at a biologically meaningful scale.
Thus, there are no portions of the DPSs range where the species has a different status from its rangewide status. Therefore, no portion of the species range provides a basis for determining that the species is in danger of extinction in a significant portion of its range, and we determine that the species is likely to become in danger of extinction within the foreseeable future throughout all of its range. This is consistent with the courts holdings in Desert Survivors v. Department of the Interior, No. 16cv01165JCS, 2018
WL 4053447 N.D. Cal. Aug. 24, 2018, and Center for Biological Diversity v.
Jewell, 248 F. Supp. 3d, 946, 959 D.
Ariz. 2017.

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