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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 148 / Thursday, August 5, 2021 / Rules and Regulations
Request and statutorily shall authorize incidental take of marine mammals for specified activities where the requisite MMPA determinations are made. There are no significant changes to AOGAs Request, the Services assumptions, or analysis that would require publishing a revised proposed ITR.
Comment 36: Commenters suggested that in the EA the Service should account for climate change impacts in order to assess impacts on polar bears and walruses potentially affected by Industry activities, and one commenter suggested the Service clarify impacts from other Industry activities and associated risks and cumulative impacts beyond the 5-year regulation period.
Response: The EA appropriately focuses on the reasonably foreseeable impacts of the Proposed Action, i.e., issuing the ITR. The ITR authorizes the Level B harassment associated with certain oil and gas activities, and does not authorize the oil and gas activities themselves. That said, the EA analyzes reasonably foreseeable impacts in the context of an environmental baseline that includes climate change-related impacts to polar bears and walruses.
Climate change-related effects were also considered in the EAs analysis of cumulative impacts. As is explained in the ITR and the EA, the effects of the authorized level B harassment are inherently limited and temporary and are not expected to persist beyond the 5-year period addressed in the ITR.
Comment 37: One commenter suggested that the Service should consider additional factors, such as population trends, increased land use, and increased potential for human-polar bear conflicts, as part of the baseline to determine negligible impacts on polar bears.
Response: We agree with the commenter that changing sea ice conditions have affected and will continue to affect polar bears in the SBS
subpopulation in various ways. We disagree, however, that we failed to consider these factors or that all of them are relevant to estimating potential impacts from AOGAs Request. For example, we account for changes in the subpopulations demographics by using the best available science e.g., Atwood et al. 2020 to inform the denning impact analysis and for setting the potential biological removal level PBR.
We also account for changes in the spatial distribution of bears i.e., more bears on land in both our denning analysis i.e., Olson et al. 2017 and surface analysis i.e., Wilson et al. 2017.
Many of the other factors listed do not have published or verified relationships
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with industrial activity, so its unclear how exactly to incorporate those factors into estimating the effects of industrial activities on polar bear disturbance levels. Even so, this does not mean that the effects are not implicitly accounted for as most of the studies we rely on to parameterize our analysis are based on data collected during the period when population-level effects of sea ice loss have been observed for the SBS i.e., 2000 onwards. For example, our case study analysis contains a significant number of observations from this period and should thus reflect any changes on how bears respond or are affected by disturbance. Similarly, for our analysis of surface-level interactions, observations come from our LOA
database in the period 20142018, a period that reflects the potential for increases in encounters between bears and humans and modified polar bear behavior as a result of potential nutritional stress.
Comment 38: One commenter suggested that the Service used an outdated and highly criticized population estimate for SBS polar bears and that the levels of take determined for this population likely reflect an overestimated percentage of the population being impacted by Industry activities.
Response: We do not rely on the results of Bromaghin et al. 2015 for analysis but rather on Atwood et al.
2020. Bromaghin et al. 2015 does not apply just to the U.S. portion of the SBS, and while Atwood et al. 2020 does, it provides evidence that the abundance in that area is similar to that found in Bromaghin et al. 2015, thus providing support for stability in the overall subpopulation estimate and, therefore, being no different from that published in Bromaghin et al. Without additional details on how those estimates are biased low, we do not address them, and instead rely on the best available scientific evidence. Currently, Bromaghin et al. 2015 and Atwood et al. 2020 represent the best available science on the status of the SBS
subpopulation.
The Service does not calculate maximum allowable levels of lethal take or take by Level A or Level B
harassment. Instead, the Service bases its determinations on the effects of the estimated incidental take from the activities specified in the Request. Here, no lethal take or Level A harassment is anticipated to occur or authorized, and the Level B harassment that is anticipated and authorized meets applicable MMPA standards. The Service is unaware of any information
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that supports a low bias in the Atwood et al. 2020 estimates.
Comment 39: Commenters suggested that the Services cautious approach to determine take estimations resulted in overestimating take of polar bears and this overestimation may impact the availability of polar bears for subsistence harvest, which may lead to conflicts between Industry entities and subsistence communities.
Response: The Service disagrees with the commenters suggestion that the ITR
inappropriately overestimated take, may lead to conflict between industry and subsistence communities, and may impact the availability of polar bears for subsistence harvest.
Comment 40: One commenter suggested that the Service should explain how their quantitative evaluation of Industry impacts on polar bears is valid and address the inconsistency with their statement in NPRA that states that quantitative evaluation of the potential effects of disturbance of polar bears is constrained by various factors.
Response: The Service has worked with AOGA to gather the necessary information on the nature, location, and timing of activities for the quantitative analyses presented in the ITR. The Services polar bear sighting database was incorporated into the analyses to provide information on abundance, distribution, and response of polar bears within the ITR area. While no projection of effects of future activities is perfect, the Service utilized best available scientific evidence, to include robust and peer-reviewed predictive modeling techniques, to perform a comprehensive analysis of estimated impacts, and to render reasoned determinations.
Comment 41: Commenters suggested that the Service overestimated the number of incidental polar bear takes and that actual instances of polar bear take will be much less over the 5-year regulation period, and requested the Service clarify whether this overestimation of take will affect additional Industry entities seeking take authorizations.
Response: We disagree that the methodology we use leads to an inappropriate overestimate of take. The Service has used best available science to generate quantitative take estimates that represent the total potential take that may occur as a result of the activities included in the applicants Request. Under the existing and previous ITRs, AOGA was required to survey for dens only along ice road and tundra travel routes. Therefore, the majority of their project area was not surveyed for dens, and, consequently,
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