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53212 Federal Register/Vol. 69, No. 168/Tuesday, August 31, 2004/Rules and Regulations indicating that those lands are essential to the species' recovery. Critical Habitat Designation The designated critical habitat constitutes our best assessment of areas that are essential to the conservation of the owl and that may require special management or protection. The areas designated are within the geographical area occupied by the species because the critical habitat designation is devised around the majority of known owl nesting sites. The designation includes both protected and restricted habitat, as defined the Recovery Plan, and contains the primary constituent elements as identified herein. We have included these areas in the designation based on information contained within the Recovery Plan that finds them to be essential to the conservation of the species because they currently possess the necessary habitat requirements for nesting, roosting, foraging, and dispersal. Critical habitat units are designated in portions of McKinley, Rio Arriba, Sandoval, and Socorro counties in New Mexico; Apache, Cochise, Coconino, Graham, and Pima counties in Arizona; Carbon, Emery, Garfield, Grand, Iron, Kane, San Juan, Washington, and Wayne counties in Utah; and Custer, Douglas, El Paso, Fremont, Huerfano, Jefferson, Pueblo, and Teller counties in Colorado. Detailed digital files of each unit can be obtained by contacting the New Mexico Ecological Services Field Office (see ADDRESSES section). We did not designate some areas that are known to have widely scattered owl sites, low owl population densities, and /or marginal habitat quality, which are not considered to be essential to this species' conservation. These areas include Dinosaur National Park in northwest Colorado; Mesa Verde National Park, Ute Mountain Ute Reservation, Southern Ute Reservation, other FS and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land in southwest Colorado and central Utah; and the Guadalupe and Davis Mountains in southwest Texas. We also did not include isolated mountains in northwestern Arizona, such as Mount Trumbull, due to their small size, isolation, and lack of information about owls in the area. Fort Wingate Army Depot, New Mexico, was proposed as critical habitat for the owl. However, during the development of this final designation we found that the Depot has been closed since 1988 and part of the lands have been transferred to the Navajo and Zuni Tribes (Ferguson 2000; Department of Defense 2004). Our understanding is that the first transfer of lands from the Army to the Tribes occurred in 2000, and the rest of the lands will be transferred following remediation of contaminants U. Jojola, BIA, pers. comm. 2004). More importantly, these lands are within critical habitat unit CP -2 that was adjusted following comments by the Cibola National Forest that the western part of the unit contains habitat that is not suitable (i.e., pinyon - juniper and ponderosa pine without oak). Accordingly, we do not believe these lands contain protected or restricted habitat. For these reasons, we conclude that Fort Wingate is not essential to the conservation of the species, and these lands are not designated as critical habitat. As reported in the proposed rule (65 FR 45336), the Southern Ute Reservation has not supported owls historically, and our assessment revealed that the Southern Ute Reservation does not support habitat essential to the species' conservation. Thus, we are not designating these lands as critical habitat because they are not essential to the conservation of the owl. We are not designating lands of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe as critical habitat. Due to the low owl population density and isolation from other occupied areas in Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah, the owl habitat on Tribal lands in southwestern Colorado is not believed to be essential for the conservation of the species. Thus, we are not designating these lands as critical habitat because they are not essential to the conservation of the owl. Owls in these areas will retain the other protections of the Act, such as the prohibitions of section 9 and the prohibition of jeopardy under section 7. In addition, other Tribal lands including Picuris, Taos, and Santa Clara Pueblos in New Mexico and the Havasupai Reservation in Arizona may have potential owl habitat. However, the available information, although limited, on the habitat quality and current or past owl occupancy in these areas does not indicate that these areas are essential to the conservation of the owl. We also conclude that the Jicarilla Apache lands in New Mexico are not essential to the conservation of the owl because there are only two historic records of owls from their lands and no owls were documented during recent survey efforts (please refer to our response to Comment 117). Therefore, we are not designating these lands as critical habitat because they are not essential to the conservation of the owl. Based upon comments and other information received, we revised the boundaries of proposed critical habitat for the owl to exclude those Federal lands that do not contain protected or restricted habitat. Further, because we have determined that lands under State and private ownership are not essential to the conservation of the owl, these lands are not being designated as critical habitat for the owl. Nonetheless, the short amount of time allowed by the court to complete this designation and available resources did not allow us to conduct the fine -scale mapping necessary to physically exclude all of the smaller and widely scattered State and private parcels. Thus, some State and private lands remain within the mapped boundaries, but by definition, these lands are not included in the designation. This critical habitat designation does not include Tribal lands; lands under State and private ownership; 157 WUI project areas on FS lands within Arizona and New Mexico that are at high risk of catastrophic wildfire and included in the 2001 programmatic WUI biological opinion and the Penasco WUI project area that we evaluated under a separate biological opinion on FS lands in New Mexico; Fort Wingate, New Mexico; Fort Carson, Colorado; Fort Huachuca, Arizona; the U.S. Naval Observatory Flagstaff Station, Arizona; and low- density areas and other areas determined to not be essential to the conservation of the species (see Exclusions Under Section 4(b)(2)" and "Summary of Changes to Proposed Rule" sections). Except for these WUI project areas, this critical habitat designation includes FS lands in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, and some other Federal lands used by owls. The approximate Federal ownership within the boundaries of owl critical habitat is shown in Table 1 below. TABLE 1.— CRITICAL HABITAT BY LAND OWNERSHIP AND STATE IN ACRES (HECTARES) Arizona New Mexico Colorado Utah Total Forest Service ...................................... ............................... 3,228,145 (1.306.341) 2,056,536 (832.223) 263,026 (106.439) 156,732 (63.425) 5,704,438 (2,308,429)