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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 1 / Monday, January 4, 2021 / Rules and Regulations
Cumulative Threats The June sucker faces threats primarily from degraded habitat and water quality, water availability, predation from nonnative species, and urbanization. Furthermore, existing regulatory mechanisms do not adequately address these threats. The June sucker also faces a future threat of climate change, which may exacerbate other existing threats. These factors may act cumulatively on the species. For example, urbanization can result in increased pressure on existing water resources as well as degraded water quality, which, when combined with rising temperatures and decreased rainfall, can result in less available water, increased water temperatures, and decreased habitat quality. These factors can cause reduced availability of food for the June sucker, decreased reproductive success, and increased mortality.
However, since the time of listing 51
FR 10851; March 31, 1986, all of the identified threats to the June sucker have either improved measurably or are being adaptively managed according to the best available scientific information for the benefit of the June sucker see Recovery, above. Conservation measures, including establishing refuge populations, stocking of June suckers in Utah Lake, habitat restoration projects on spawning tributaries, and nonnative fish removal, have resulted in increased numbers of June suckers in the lake, evidence of wild reproduction, and improved habitat within the lake and its tributaries. As a result, resiliency, redundancy, and representation have all improved. Continued research and monitoring provide an avenue to respond to new and evolving threats, such as the effects of climate change, to recovery progress. The existence of refuge populations ensures that, should a stochastic event or extreme combination of existing threats greatly impact the population in Utah Lake, the June sucker would not become extinct.
This resilience to the cumulative threats is due largely to the actions of an active, committed, and well-funded recovery partnership. The JSRIP is the driving force behind the reduction in threats, habitat improvement, and population augmentation, and the JSRIP
is able to adaptively manage new stressors as they arise. The improvement of conditions and success of the JSRIP
can be measured via the increased number of spawning June suckers, the positive population trend, and the high level of year-to-year survival.

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Summary of Comments and Recommendations In the proposed rule published in the Federal Register on November 26, 2019
84 FR 65080, we requested that all interested parties submit written comments on our proposal to downlist the June sucker by January 27, 2020. We also contacted appropriate Federal and State agencies, scientific experts and organizations, and other interested parties and invited them to comment on the proposal. Newspaper notices inviting general public comment were published in the Salt Tribune Salt Lake City and Daily Herald Provo. We did not receive any requests for a public hearing. All substantive information provided during the comment period is either incorporated directly into this final rule or is addressed below.
Peer Reviewer Comments In accordance with our joint policy on peer review published on July 1, 1994
59 FR 34270 and our August 22, 2016, memorandum USFWS 2016, entire updating and clarifying the role of peer review of listing actions under the Act, we solicited expert opinion from three knowledgeable individuals with scientific expertise and familiarity with the June sucker, its habitat, its biological needs and potential threats, or principles of conservation biology. The purpose of peer review is to ensure that our listing and reclassification determinations are based on scientifically sound data, assumptions, and analyses. We received responses from two peer reviewers.
We reviewed all comments we received from the peer reviewers for substantive issues and new information regarding the proposed downlisting of the June sucker. The peer reviewers provided additional information, clarifications, and suggestions to improve the final rule, which we include in this rule or address in the responses to comments below. One peer reviewer favored the downlisting of the June sucker and provided only small, technical edits to the document. The other peer reviewer also provided technical edits and suggestions. This reviewer also expressed concern that there was not enough detail in the proposed rule to determine whether June sucker meets the definition of a threatened species, and stated that many of the known threats should be more thoroughly mitigated before downlisting should be considered. Substantive comments from this reviewer are addressed below, and minor editorial comments were resolved in the text of the rule itself.

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1 Comment: The reviewer suggested that there may be additional information that could contribute to the accuracy and completeness of our description and analysis of the biology, habitat, population trends, and historical and current distribution of the June sucker.
The reviewer stated there is quantitative information on population dynamics and trends that was not considered in the proposed rule.
Our Response: The reviewer did not specify what information may be missing from the rule or provide information on population dynamics and trends that we failed to consider.
We were unable to find additional population or biological information about the June sucker that we had not reviewed when the proposed rule was published. Some additional information has become available since publication of the proposed rule, and it is included in the text of this rule where relevant.
2 Comment: The reviewer commented that we referred the reader to the final listing rule and recovery plan, respectively published in 1986
and 1999, but that these documents are relatively old, and substantial new information has accrued since their appearance, which we reference later.
Our Response: The final listing rule 51 FR 10851; March 31, 1986 and the recovery plan Service 1999 represent the only two Service-published documents with significant information on the biology and habitat of the June sucker, until the proposed rule was published in 2019 84 FR 65080;
November 26, 2019. We referenced the older documents in the proposed rule because the proposed rule itself also served as the 5-year review and our most recent update to those documents.
As the reviewer notes, many other and more recent references are available for additional information and are cited in the text of both the proposed and final rules.
3 Comment: The reviewer stated that we did not adequately consider some of the threats to June sucker in our analysis, particularly predation by white bass on juvenile June suckers, avian predation, and the reliance on hatcheryproduced fish to maintain the population, as natural reproduction and recruitment are not sufficient. The reviewer did not provide any additional information to support these comments.
Our Response: The November 26, 2019, proposed rule 84 FR 65080, as well as this final rule, recognize that the June sucker currently relies on stocking to maintain the population in Utah Lake. We do not find this reliance to be in conflict with a threatened status determination, as we have reasonable
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