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Field Observations:

The Section 7 Training Blog

Latest Posts

Hello and thanks for taking a look at our latest posts. Though the blog is still in its early stages and the number of posts is small right now, it will certainly grow over time as new events and topics of interest present themselves within the Section 7 universe. We hope you find this first sampling informative and that you will continue to check back from time to time to see what's new.

Revision of Habitat Definition for Designation of Critical Habitat
On Friday June 24, 2022, the Service published a final rule in the Federal Register (Fed. Reg. Vol. 87, No. 121, pp. 37757 – 37771). That rule removed the definition of “habitat’ from the regulations pertaining to the designation of critical habitat (50 CFR 424.02)...
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A Look at Causation
During the class the issue of “caused by” came up as it is used in the regulatory definition of “effects of the action” (50 CFR 402.02) and the associated terms of “but for” and “reasonably certain to occur”. (These terms also relate to construction of an incidental take statement.) This is always a difficult point in framing biological assessments and biological opinions.
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But For and Reasonably Certain to Occur
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the value of reading preambles in federal register notices to give context to words and processes. While preparing some training materials for my online courses, an example came to mind - the phrases “but for” and “reasonably certain to occur” (sometimes abbreviated to ‘rcto’ just to confuse new practitioners).
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Benefit of the Doubt
The other day I was reminded of the phrase “benefit of the doubt”. This phrase gets used occasionally in conversations around Section 7 consultation. It is mentioned in the handbook, and it's mentioned in the preamble to the 1986 regulation revisions. That particular use of the phrase comes from page 12 of a 1979 Congressional Conference Report where changes to the wording in the Act were being debated. Initially, the conversations that I heard around this phrase didn't make a lot of sense to me
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