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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 162 / Wednesday, August 25, 2021 / Proposed Rules Analytical Framework The SSA report documents the results of our comprehensive biological review of the best scientific and commercial data available regarding the status of the species, including an assessment of the potential threats to the species. The SSA
report does not represent a decision by the Service on whether the species should be proposed for listing as an endangered or threatened species under the Act. It does, however, provide the scientific basis that informs our regulatory decisions, which involve the further application of standards within the Act and its implementing regulations and policies. The following is a summary of the key results and conclusions from the SSA report; the full SSA report can be found at Docket No. FWSHQES20200100 on http
www.regulations.gov.
To assess the Amur sturgeons viability, we used the three conservation-biology principles of resiliency, redundancy, and representation Shaffer and Stein 2000, pp. 306310. Briefly, resiliency supports the ability of the species to withstand environmental and demographic stochasticity for example, wet or dry, warm or cold years, redundancy supports the ability of the species to withstand catastrophic events for example, droughts, large pollution events, and representation supports the ability of the species to adapt over time to long-term changes in the environment for example, climate changes. In general, the more resilient and redundant a species is and the more representation it has, the more likely it is to sustain populations over time, even under changing environmental conditions. Using these principles, we identified the species ecological requirements for survival and reproduction at the individual, population, and species levels, and described the beneficial and risk factors influencing the species viability.
The SSA process can be categorized into three sequential stages. During the first stage, we evaluated the individual species life-history needs. The next stage involved an assessment of the historical and current condition of the species demographics and habitat characteristics, including an explanation of how the species arrived at its current condition. The final stage of the SSA involved making predictions about the species responses to positive and negative environmental and anthropogenic influences. Throughout all of these stages, we used the best scientific and commercial information available to characterize viability as the
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ability of a species to sustain populations in the wild over time. We use this information to inform our regulatory decision.
Summary of Biological Status and Threats In this discussion, we review the biological condition of the species and its resources, and the threats that influence the species current and future condition, in order to assess the species overall viability and the risks to that viability.
Overfishing and the Trade in Amur Sturgeon Caviar and Meat Unsustainable harvest for caviar and meat consumption is the foremost threat to the Amur sturgeon Vaisman and Fomenko 2006, entire; Zhuang et al.
2002, p. 659. Both domestic and international demand fuel the market for these products and are a primary reason that 85 percent of sturgeon species are listed as critically endangered or extinct in the wild on the International Union for the Conservation of Natures Red List note that while informative the Red List has no legal effect and uses different standards for inclusion than does the Act; Rachler and Reinartz 2017, p. 1.
The threat posed by overfishing is despite both Russian and Chinese prohibition of open commercial fishing and trade of the Amur sturgeon. In China, permits have been required since 2001 Harris and Shiraishi 2018, pp. 46
47; Wang and Chang 2006, p. 48 and the countrys law enforcement efforts limit poaching in Chinese territory Simonov and Dahmer 2008, p. 130;
Novomodny et al. 2004, p. 24. In Russia, the commercial Amur sturgeon fishery has been banned since 1984 and was previously limited or closed by a series of temporary regulations as early as the 1920s Harris and Shiraishi 2018, p. 9. However, since 1991 Russian state-sanctioned harvests so-called test fishing or controlled catches, purportedly for population monitoring, have likely been used as cover for continued fishing and commercial sale Vaisman and Fomenko 2006, pp. v, 9
18; CITES 2001, p. 35. There is no restriction on the sale of caviar produced from fish caught in test fishing and it is likely that test fishing quotas are regularly exceeded Vaisman and Fomenko 2006, p. 10. Overall, fishing bans Wang and Chang 2006, p. 51; Xinhuanet, June 11, 2002 have not been successful at protecting or restoring the species, given the long history of overexploitation and ongoing harvests, both illegal see below and state-sanctioned.

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Prior to the current set of fisheries regulations, legal overharvest caused a greater than 99 percent decline in the volume of Amur sturgeon caught in Russia between 1891 and 1948 Kryukov 1894 cited in Krykhtin and Svirskii 1997, pp. 231232. Fishing records from China similarly indicate that overfishing has caused massive population declines in the Amur sturgeon Wang and Chang 2006, p. 45.
After a peak of 461 mt 508 t in 1981, the Chinese catch declined precipitously to an average of just less than 120 mt 130 t between 1996 and 2002, with just 50 and 25 mt 55 and 28
t caught in the final 2 years Vaisman and Fomenko 2006, table 6. Overall, the species population declined by greater than 95% between 1960 and 2010
Ruban and Qiwei 2010, not paginated.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Amur sturgeon was by far the most commonly traded sturgeon species in China Zhu et al. 2008, p. 31. Although this demand was largely fulfilled with captive-bred fish, the large-scale use of wild-caught Amur sturgeon as broodstock in aquaculture contributed to a crash in Amur sturgeon populations Simonov and Dahmer 2008, p. 129 and figure 3.4; Wei no date, p. 1. By 2017, some residents of the Amur region within China reported that the fishs population was so low that it could not support a profitable fishery Harris and Shiraishi 2018, p. 46.
The Amur sturgeon was included in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora CITES in 1998, along with all other species in the order Acipenseriformes not previously listed under Appendix I
CITES 1997a, pp. 8084; CITES 1997b, pp. 171; Ruban and Qiwei 2010, not paginated; Wang and Chang 2006, p. 48. Both range countries, Russia and China, are Parties to CITES, as is the United States. CITES Parties adopted a series of recommendations to improve regulation of the international sturgeon trade Harris and Shirashi 2018, pp. 19
22, including reporting of scientifically based quotas for any legal wild-caught sturgeon CITES 2015, entire; CITES
2010, entire and a caviar-labeling system to verify its legal origin CITES
2015; 50 CFR 23.71; USFWS OLE 2008.
Since the inclusion of all sturgeon species in the CITES Appendices in 1998, the proportion of caviar in international trade reported to be of captive-bred origin has climbed from near zero to near 100 percent CITES
Trade database cited in Harris and Shiraishi 2018, p. 25; UNEPWCMC
2008 p. 31. Since 2011, no quotas for wild-caught Amur sturgeon have been
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