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The Section 7 Training Blog

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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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Preambles to Regulations
An often-overlooked source of insight into the rules and process of consultation are the preambles to regulations. Any time a regulation is put in place, or changed, it has to be published in the Federal Register (the “Government’s Newspaper”) https://www.federalregister.gov/. I have posted what I think are the 3 most relevant Federal Register notices for consultation practitioners on our Resources page.
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Draft Handbook
I mentioned a revised handbook in the previous post. Most practitioners know that one was being drafted in 2020. Where it was relevant, some areas were, of course, framed on the text of the most current (2019 50 CFR 402) consultation regulation revisions. That draft made it through a great deal of review and was headed for the next step in the process. However, the Service was sued on the 2019 revisions ...
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