Department of the Interior December 17, 2012 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

We, the Fish and Wildlife Service, announce the availability of our final recovery plan, first revision, for the Mexican Spotted Owl, which is listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended (Act). This species occurs in the States of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah, and south through the Sierra Madre Occidental and Sierra Madre Oriental in Mexico. The recovery plan includes specific recovery objectives and criteria to be met in order to enable us to remove this species from the list of endangered and threatened wildlife and plants.

The Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Policy, Management and Budget has approved an amendment to a previously filed application to withdraw public lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah from settlement, sale, location, and entry under the public land laws, including the United States mining laws, on behalf of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), to protect and preserve Solar Energy Zones (SEZ) for future solar energy development. This Notice amends the prior proposal notice of which was published in the Federal Register on April 21, 2011 (76 FR 22414), to increase the proposed withdrawal term from 5 to 20 years, decrease the acreage proposed for withdrawal, and provide revised legal descriptions for the 17 remaining SEZs presented in the Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States (Programmatic EIS). This Notice also terminates the segregative effect as to lands no longer included in the application. The purpose of the proposed withdrawal has also changed so that the lands would now be protected for future solar energy development.