Department of Agriculture December 1, 2015 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, this notice announces the intention of the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) to request extension without change of a currently approved information collection, the Generic Clearance for Survey Research Studies. There are no revisions to burden hours or the number of responses under this information collection request.

The Agricultural Research Service (ARS) increases its Patent Culture Collection charges, and revises the method of payment.

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, this notice announces the intention the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) to request revision and extension of a currently approved information collection, the Cold Storage Survey. Revision to burden hours will be needed due to changes in the size of the target population, expected increases in response rates, and modes of data collection. The questionnaires have had some minor modifications to accommodate changes in the products stored by the industry, and to make the questionnaires easier to complete. The target population for cold storage operators (both mandatory and voluntary samples) will be contacted for this data on a monthly basis. Fruit storage operations are contacted on a monthlyseasonal basis. The capacity survey is conducted once every other year of all operations with refrigerated storage capacity. Most of these surveys are voluntary; the one exception is for operations that store certain manufactured dairy products that are required by Public Law 106-532 and 107-171 to respond.

In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, this notice invites the general public and other public agencies to comment on this proposed information collection. This is a revision of an existing collection for the Food and Nutrition Service to describe the roles of community-based organizations (CBOs) in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and to assess if, and how, the use of CBOs to conduct SNAP applicant interviews has impacted SNAP program outcomes such as timeliness, payment error rates, access, and client satisfaction across five (5) States.

In 2007, the Wasatch-Cache National Forest, now the Uinta- Wasatch-Cache National Forest (UWCNF), along with other forests in the Nation issued a number of decisions reissuing term grazing permits on range allotments using a provisional categorical exclusion (CE) authorized by Congress. In 2010, the United States Forest Service was sued for authorizing grazing on allotments using this CE authority. In December 2013, the Intermountain Region and the United States District Court for the District Court of Idaho agreed to the Range CE settlement agreement. This agreement stipulated that the UWCNF would issue a scoping notice by May 2014 on five domestic sheep allotments. These were Gilbert Peak, Hessie Lake-Henry's Fork, Red Castle, East Fork Blacks Fork, and the Middle Fork Blacks Fork allotments. In reviewing the management of these domestic sheep allotments it became apparent that the effects of grazing had to be considered for both the north and south slope of the Uinta Mountains because sheep trailed from the north slope of the Uinta Mountains to the south slope for the summer grazing season. Therefore, the analysis was then extended to include the Painter Basin, Tungsten, Oweep, Ottoson Basin, and Fall Creek sheep allotments on the Ashley National Forest, which are some of the domestic sheep allotments on the south slope of the Uinta Mountains. Since 2007, various species of terrestrial and aquatic animals as well as plants have been added to or removed from the Regional Forester's Sensitive Species (RFSS) list. The RFSS will be analyzed as part of the EIS. In May of 2014, scoping was initiated for this project; at that time, it was anticipated that the project would be completed as an Environmental Assessment. Since then, it has become apparent that there is a potential for significant impacts and that an Environmental Impact Statement is needed. This project will evaluate the effects of continued domestic sheep grazing on these 10 allotments. These 10 sheep allotments located on the north and south slopes of the Uinta Mountains and are located in the Ashley or Uinta-Wasatch-Cache NFs.