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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 103 / Tuesday, June 1, 2021 / Proposed Rules established five future scenarios to represent a range of plausible outcomes based upon three plausible levels of conservation restoration efforts and three plausible levels of impacts. To account for some of the uncertainty in these projections, we combined the levels of impacts into five different scenarios labeled 1 through 5 Table 8.
Scenario 1 represents the scenario with low levels of future impacts and high levels of future restoration, and Scenario 5 represents the scenario with high impacts and low restoration. Scenario 1
and 5 were used to frame the range of projected outcomes used in our model as they represent the low and high of likely projected outcomes. Scenarios 2, 3, and 4 are model iterations that fall within the range bounded by scenarios 1 and 5 and have continuation of the current level of restoration efforts and vary impacts at low, mid, and high levels, respectively. These scenarios provide a wide range of potential future outcomes to consider in assessing lesser prairie-chicken habitat conditions.

TABLE 8SCHEMATIC OF FUTURE
SCENARIOS FOR LESSER PRAIRIECHICKEN CONSERVATION CONSIDERING A RANGE OF FUTURE IMPACTS AND RESTORATION EFFORTS
Scenario
Levels of future change in usable area Restoration
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1
2 3
4 5

Impacts
High
Continuation
Continuation
Continuation
Low

Low.
Low.
Mid.
High.
High.

To project the likely future effects of impacts and conservation efforts to the landscape as described through our land cover model, we quantified the three levels of future habitat restoration and three levels of future impacts within the analysis area by ecoregion on an annual basis. In addition to restoration efforts, we also quantified those efforts that enhance existing habitat. While these enhancement efforts do not increase the amount of available area and thus are not included in the spatial analysis, they are summarized in the SSA report and considered as part of the overall analysis of the biological status of the species. We then extrapolated those results over the next 25 years. We chose 25 years as a period for which we had reasonable confidence in reliably projecting these future changes, and the timeframe corresponds with some of the long-term planning for the lesser prairiechicken. A complete description of
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methodology used to quantify projections of impacts and future conservation efforts is provided in the SSA report Service 2021, Appendix C.
Quantifying future conservation efforts in terms of habitat restoration allows us to account for the positive impact of those efforts within our analysis by converting areas of land cover that were identified as potential habitat in our current condition model to usable land cover for the lesser prairie-chicken in the future projections.
Explicitly quantifying three levels of impacts in the future allows us to account for the effect of these impacts on the lesser prairie-chicken by converting areas identified as usable land cover in our current condition model to nonusable area that will not be available for use by the lesser prairiechicken in the future.
As we did for the current condition to assess habitat connectivity, after we characterized the projected effects of conservation and impacts on potential future usable areas, we grouped the areas of potential usable, unimpacted land cover on these new future landscape projections using our nearest neighbor analysis Service 2021, pp. 21
24; Appendix B, Parts 1, 2, and 3. Also, as done for the current condition, we evaluated the frequency of usable area blocks by size in order to evaluate habitat fragmentation and connectivity in the future scenarios Service 2021, Figure 4.2.
Threats Influencing Future Condition Following are summary evaluations of the expected future condition of threats analyzed in the SSA for the lesser prairie-chicken: Effects associated with habitat degradation, loss, and fragmentation, including conversion of grassland to cropland Factor A, petroleum production Factor A, wind energy development and transmission Factor A, woody vegetation encroachment Factor A, and roads and electrical distribution lines Factor A;
climate change Factor A; and other factors, such as livestock grazing Factor A, shrub control and eradication Factor A, fire Factor A; and climate change Factor E.
In this proposed rule, we do not present summary evaluations of the following threats as we have no information to project future trends, though we do expect them to have some effect on the species in the future:
Predation Factor C, collision mortality from fences Factor E, and influence of anthropogenic noise Factor E. We also do not discuss the following threats, as they are having little to no impact on the species and its habitat currently, nor
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do we expect them to into the foreseeable future: Hunting and other recreational, educational, and scientific use Factor B; parasites and diseases Factor C; and insecticides Factor E.
For the purposes of this assessment, we consider the foreseeable future to be the amount of time on which we can reasonably determine a likely threats anticipated trajectory and the anticipated response of the species to those threats. For climate change, the time for which we can reliably project threats and the anticipated response is approximately 60 years. For many other threats impacting the lesser prairiechicken throughout its range, we consider the time for which we can reliably project threats and the anticipated response to be 25 years. This time period represents our best professional judgment of the foreseeable future conditions related to conversion of grassland to cropland, petroleum production, wind energy, and woody vegetation encroachment, and, as discussed above, is the time period used to project these threats in our geospatial analysis. For this period, we had reasonable confidence in projecting these future changes, and the timeframe corresponds with some of the long-term planning for the lesser prairie-chicken.
For other threats and the anticipated species response, we can reliably project impacts and the species response for less than 25 years, such as livestock grazing, roads and electrical distribution lines, shrub control and eradication, and fire.
Habitat Loss and Fragmentation As discussed in Threats Influencing Current Condition, habitat loss and fragmentation is the primary concern for lesser prairie-chicken viability. We discuss how each of these activities may contribute to future habitat loss and fragmentation for the lesser prairiechicken and present the outcomes of the projections.
Conversion of Grassland to Cropland Because much of the lands capable of being used for row crops has already been converted to cultivated agriculture, we do not expect future rates of conversion to reach those witnessed historically; however, conversion has continued to occur Lark 2020, entire.
Rates of future conversion of grasslands to cultivated agriculture in the analysis area will be affected by multiple variables including site-specific biotic and abiotic conditions as well as socioeconomic influences such as governmental agriculture programs, commodity prices, and the economic
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