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U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

May 11, 2026

Submitted via www.regulations.gov, dockets no. FWS—HQ—ES—2025–1463 and FWS—
HQ—ES—2025–1465.
Re: OMB Control Number 1018–0095, as per 91 Fed. Reg. 12211 (March 12, 2026): Agency
Information Collection Activities; Endangered and Threatened Wildlife, Experimental
Populations.
To Whom It May Concern,
This is the seventh comment letter submitted by the Center for Biological Diversity in
response to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s seven similar requests for comments since 2017 on
its information-collecting requirements for reintroduced experimental populations. The evidence
has only increased over the ensuing years that the existing bare-bones set of information
collected, as outlined in the instant and the previous Federal Register notices, is necessary but
not sufficient to guide effective conservation.
The existing information-collection categories allow rudimentary tracking of
experimental populations and logically follow from the Fish and Wildlife Service’s authorization
of ‘take’ of members of such populations. Clearly, the Service must track the extent of that take
– i.e. how many animals are getting killed, injured or removed alive – and the circumstances.
However, the existing information-collecting is inadequate because it only enables
conclusions about the status of the population and does not provide all of the germane
information that is necessary to guide conservation.

I. Reporting on Depredation-Related Take
In addition to the information that it already collects, as part of its record-keeping on
depredation-related take, the Service should collect the following two categories of information:
1) Any preventative techniques implemented to protect livestock, including descriptions of
such methods and the dates that they were implemented, and the results of these
techniques in guarding stock including the time that elapsed after such implementation
until occurrence of any predation on protected stock by members of the experimental
population.
2) Time elapsed after completion of permitted ‘take’ of one or more members of
experimental populations until any renewed onset of predation on the same ranch’s
livestock by members of the experimental population.

2
Collecting these two categories of information would clarify the relative efficacy for
long-term prevention of conflict of two different management approaches. Collecting such
information would help to answer the question for any particular experimental population as to
whether killing, injuring or removing alive members of the population works best in the long-run
to prevent predation on livestock while moving toward recovery – or whether employing
preventative measures to protect livestock is more effective in preventing such losses while
moving toward recovery.
It is important to collect such information because depredation-related take can be
harmful to populations of threatened and endangered species, including to experimental
populations which typically have less-stringent protections from take. Consequently, developing
and implementing effective means to reduce incidents in which members of experimental
populations attack domestic animals can be critical to the conservation of such experimental
populations. Consider, for example, the factors affecting recovery of Mexican wolves in the
Southwest, as determined by federal and state wolf managers and researchers in 2023 who found
that recovery in
a shared landscape away from protected areas . . . is more difficult and requires greater
tolerance for conflict and more emphasis placed on preventive techniques and effective
compensation programs. A policy anchored in conflict prevention with less emphasis on
rapid management removal appears to be an important consideration for large carnivores
facing conservation challenges in shared landscapes, especially during the early phases of
recovery.1
They concluded that “balancing management removals with other demographic factors and
focusing on conflict prevention and compensation programs are critical for addressing conflict. 2
These agency staffers also candidly reported in their study that “implementing a
preventive program is not necessarily an easy task, particularly when conflict spikes and
pushback on the recovery program from the agricultural community becomes more strident.” 3
The difficulty in implementing a preventative program makes it all the more imperative to
determine, through collecting the two additional categories of information that we request above,
which techniques are most effective. Determining effectiveness will, first and foremost, serve as
a predicate for which techniques should be most demonstrated, encouraged and funded to reduce
conflict and thereby reduce authorized take. Greater implementation of the most effective
preventative techniques along with less time and fewer resources dedicated to less-effective
techniques may in turn reduce the stridency and therefore also reduce the incidents of
vindictively motivated illegal take.

1

Breck, S.W., Davis, A.J., Oakleaf, J.K., Bergman, D. L., deVos, J., Greer, J.P., and Pepin, K. 2023. Factors
affecting the recovery of Mexican wolves in the Southwest United States. Journal of Applied Ecology, 60:2199–
2209; p. 2205.
2
Ibid, p. 2206.
3
Ibid.

3
The less-than-fully-effective implementation of a conflict-prevention program to assist in
conservation of the Mexican wolf experimental population has contributed, along with other
management missteps, to losses of genetic diversity. That is turning out to be disastrous in a
population whose subspecies underwent a drastic demographic bottleneck, reduced by the 1980’s
to just seven animals successfully bred in captivity. Last year the experimental population was
calculated to retain just 2.08 founder genome equivalents, reduced by over two-thirds from the
genetic diversity that was bequeathed from those seven survivors and founders. And over each
of the years 2021 through 2025, genetic diversity in that experimental population declined
further.4 Ominously, the genetic diversity may continue to decline, in part because last year
authorized take in response to Mexican wolf predation on livestock included the killings of three
genetically-valuable wolves: Alpha female 1823 of the Bear Canyon Pack, who was nursing
dependent pups (who were not saved) when she was shot by USDA Wildlife Services on April
14, 2025; an unnumbered Mañada del Arroyo Pack pup killed by lethal injection by Arizona
Game and Fish Department on May 27, 2025; and female pup 3077 of the Dillon Mountain Pack
who was shot by Wildlife Services on August 12, 2025.
Information collection such as we request would provide otherwise-unavailable field data
to enable managers and the public to ascertain what conditions work best to reduce predation on
livestock. That in turn will greatly enhance the ability of agencies and ranchers to adaptively
reduce conflicts and thereby reduce the impetus to remove from the wild (i.e. take) Mexican
wolves and members of other experimental populations.
We assess that individual livestock owners could collect the information that we request
the Service collect, and provide it to the Service, in less than half an hour per month, although
the time required would vary depending on how often preventative techniques are employed.
Jotting down in a paper notebook, computer, tablet or phone, the date and time of preventative
techniques and the results, as well as the dates of predation on livestock, would take just seconds
in each instance. Similarly, emailing, texting or mailing the information to the Service would
also take mere minutes.
Other entities to which the Service delegates authority to take members of experimental
populations, including but not limited to state and Tribal agencies, and USDA Wildlife Services,
should also be subject to these information collection requirements, and it is likely that these
agencies utilizing established information collection procedures, could similarly provide such
information to the Service in less than half an hour per month.

II. Reporting on Incidental Take
In addition to the collection of the above two categories of additional information that we
request for depredation related take, we also request the collection of information related to
4

Spevak, E.M. 2025. Mexican Wolf Demographic and Genetic Status 2025. Powerpoint presentation to Mexican
Wolf Saving Animals From Extinction (SAFE) program participants;
https://biologicaldiversity.org/programs/carnivore-conservation/pdfs/Mexican-wolf-demographic-and-geneticstatus-2025.pdf

4
instances of take that occur incidental to, and not as the purpose of, the carrying out of an
otherwise lawful activity, such as incidental take that is authorized in the 10(j) rule for grizzly
bears in the North Cascades Ecosystem. For such incidental take, in addition to the information
currently required to be reported pertaining to lethal or permanently-injurious take, the Service
should collect the following three categories of information:
1) Occurrences of non-lethal, temporarily-injurious incidental take.
2) The detailed circumstances surrounding each occurrence of incidental take.
3) Any measures undertaken or intended to be undertaken to reduce the likelihood of such
incidental take in the future.
Requiring the reporting of such information could help to prevent future instances of
incidental take of grizzly bears and of members of other experimental populations for several
reasons. First, in regard to non-permanently-injurious take, the same activity conducted a
different time could result in lethal take or take that leads to permanent injury, which means that
collecting such information could help agencies and individuals to know how to modify their
activities to avoid circumstances in which incidental take that could be more harmful occurs.
Similarly, knowing the detailed circumstance of events that lead to incidental take can
play an important preventative role.
Lastly, understanding the measures undertaken or planned to prevent the occurrence of
such incidental take in the future would enable examination later of the efficacy of such
measures.
We believe that reporting of such information from persons, agencies and/or any other
entity to which take authority may be delegated, may take from 5 to 30 minutes per occurrence,
but that occurrences will be rare and therefore, on average, reporting of such information would
take 10 minutes or less per month.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,

Michael J. Robinson, Senior Conservation Advocate
Center for Biological Diversity
[email protected]