Wildlife Damage Management, Internet Center for
Date of this Version
April 1991
Abstract
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) conducts a national, cooperative Animal Damage Control (ADC) program for the protection of American agriculture and other resources from wildlife damage. Like all Federal governmental activities, APHIS-ADC must comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, as amended. This law directs Federal agencies to analyze the environmental impacts of major Federal actions, incorporate environmental considerations into decision making, and generally to mitigate adverse environmental impacts due to governmental activities. NEPA also established the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to promulgate regulations for implementing the procedural provisions of NEPA. The CEQ regulations appear in the Code of Federal Regulations (40 CFR Parts 1500-1508). APHIS has supplemented the CEQ regulations with additional rules for NEPA compliance (44 FR 50381, 8/28/79)1. As indicated by Acord (1989) at the last Great Plains Wildlife Damage Control Workshop, APHIS is planning for a comprehensive Environmental Inpact Statement (EIS) to cover ADC activities nationwide began with transfer of the ADC program from the U.S. Department of the Interior (USDI) to USDA in December 1985 (Public Law 99-190, 465). In preparing to assume management of ADC, APHIS adopted USDI's Final EIS on this program (51 FR 6290, 2/21/86). That analysis (USDI 1979) did not cover all ADC program activities, so APHIS soon began work on a new programmatic EIS. The formal Notice of Intent to prepare a new EIS on the Federal/Cooperative ADC program was published by APHIS in November 1987 (52 FR 43778, 11/16/87). Public comments on the scope and content of this EIS were solicited and evaluated during December 1987 and January 1988.