The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service today announced that it is seeking comments by Friday, Nov. 26 on its proposal to rescind a final rule published in Dec. 2020 that added a definition of “habitat” to the Endangered Species Act implementing regulations related to critical habitat designations, finding that the find that the definition and the preamble of the 2020 final rule “inappropriately constrain the Services’ ability to designate areas that meet the definition of ‘‘critical habitat’’ under the Act.”
USFWS separately announced that it is also seeking comments by Friday, Nov. 26 on its proposal to rescind a final rule published in Dec. 2020 that established a process for excluding areas of critical habitat by outlining when and how an exclusion analysis would be conducted, including identifying a non-exhaustive list of categories of potential impacts that would be considered. In proposing the rescindment, USFWS said that the 2020 rule “unduly constrained the Service’s discretion in administering the Act, potentially limiting or undermining the Service’s role as the expert agency and its ability to further the conservation of endange
