Critical Habitat for the Pecos Sunflower
About the Document
Title: Proposed Rule to Designate Critical Habitat for the Pecos Sunflower (Helianthus paradoxus)
Purpose: The document describes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s (Service) proposal to designate critical habitat for the threatened Pecos Sunflower (Helianthus paradoxus) under section 4 of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Act). The proposed rule will be published in the Federal Register for public review and is an assessment of the best scientific data available at this time and will be the basis, in addition to any comments received, for a finding by the Service on whether or not to finalize the rule to designate critical habitat for the Pecos Sunflower.
About the Peer Review Process
Type of Review: Influential
Date of Peer Review:March - November 2007
Estimated Dissemination Date : March 27, 2007
Process: The Service will conduct peer review of the portion of the proposed rule for designation of critical habitat that includes a discussion of the scientific information reviewed and our analysis. The Service will solicit peer review through letters to three or more independent scientific reviewers, seeking input from university and agency experts involved in the study and conservation of the Pecos Sunflower.
Peer reviewers will be selected based on the following criteria:
- Expertise: Reviewers should have knowledge in one or more of the following areas: botany, flora of the Southwest, wetlands and hydrology.
- Independence: Reviewers should not be employed by the Service. Academic and consulting scientists should have sufficient independence from the Service or the Department if the government supports their work.
- Objectivity: Reviewers should be recognized by their peers as being objective, open-minded, and thoughtful. The reviewers should be comfortable sharing their knowledge and identifying their knowledge gaps.
- Advocacy: Reviewers should not be known or recognized for an affiliation with an advocacy position regarding the protection of this species under the Endangered Species Act.
- Conflict of Interest: Reviewers should not have any financial or other interest that conflicts or that could impair their objectivity.
Peer reviewers will not be asked to provide recommendations on the designation of critical habitat. Peer reviewers may be asked to: comment specifically on the quality of any information and analyses used or relied on in the document; identify oversights, omissions, and inconsistencies; provide advice on reasonableness of judgments made from the scientific evidence; ensure that scientific uncertainties are clearly identified and characterized, and that potential implications of uncertainties for the technical conclusions drawn are clear; and provide advice on the overall strengths and limitation of the scientific data used in the document. We will use the information received from the peer review in the final rule designating critical habitat for the Pecos sunflower.
About Public Participation
Public comments on the proposed critical habitat will be sought concurrently with the peer review by a Federal Register announcement and the distribution by mail and press release of this announcement to interested parties.
We will publish a final rule for critical habitat of the Pecos sunflower on or about March of 2008 in the Federal Register, including a summary of the results of the peer review process.
Both the proposed and final rules will be published on the Service’s website at http://ecos.fws.gov/speciesProfile/SpeciesReport.do?spcode=Q0YJ
Contact: Patricia Zenone, Ph.D., New Mexico Ecological Services Field Office, patricia_zenone@fws.gov or 505-761-4718.