U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Response to the Catfish Farmers of Arkansas Information Quality Act (IQA) Request for Correction

Authors

Date of this Version

2007

Comments

Published by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (2007) 4 pp.

Abstract

In February 2000, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service or we) received a petition from the Mississippi Interstate Cooperative Resources Association (MICRA) to list the black carp (Mylopharyngodon piceus) under the injurious wildlife provision of the Lacey Act (18 U.S.C. § 42). On June 2, 2000, we published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) (65 FR 35314) to seek comments on whether or not we should propose to list black carp as injurious under the Lacey Act. The comment period on the ANPR was open for 60 days, until August 1, 2000. During that comment period, we received 124 comments. We published a proposed rule to add all forms of live black carp to the list of injurious fishes under the Lacey Act in the Federal Register on July 30, 2002 (67 FR 49280). We opened the public comment period on the proposed rule for 60 days, until September 30, 2002. We received 82 comments on the proposed rule. Because of the complexity of this issue, on June 4, 2003, in an effort to gather more economic and ecological information on our proposed action, we reopened the public comment period on the proposed rule for an additional 30 days, until August 4, 2003 (68 FR 33431). We received 21 comments during the reopened comment period. On August 30, 2005, we published in the Federal Register (70 FR 51326) a document announcing the availability of the draft environmental assessment and draft economic analysis, including the initial regulatory flexibility analysis, for the proposed rule, and sought public comments on those draft documents and on listing only the diploid (fertile) form of black carp. The public comment period for the draft documents was originally 60 days, ending October 31, 2005; however on October 27, 2005, we published a document (70 FR 61933) extending the comment period by an additional 45 days, until December 16, 2005. During the 105-day comment period, we received 89 comments. Therefore, in total, the Service received 316 comments during the four public comment periods.

Many of the comments provided in the IQA request for correction were already received during these public comment periods. These situations are detailed below.