Relict Leopard Frog Conservation Agreement and Rangewide Conservation Assessment and Strategy Sample Clauses

Relict Leopard Frog Conservation Agreement and Rangewide Conservation Assessment and Strategy. ‌ The Conservation Agreement and Rangewide Conservation Assessment and Strategy for the Relict Leopard Frog (CAS) was approved in 2005 and is the result of a multi-agency cooperative effort represented by the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the Nevada Department of Wildlife, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, the Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Biological Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Park Service, the University of Nevada Las Vegas and Reno, the Southern Nevada Water Authority, the Nature Conservancy, and the Xxxxx County Desert Conservation Program. The CAS was approved in 2005 and is being implemented by the Relict Leopard Frog Conservation Team (RLFCT), which is comprised of representatives from the signatory agencies, as well as participants from other agencies and academic institutions. The CAS was developed consistent with the Service’s Policy for the Evaluation of Conservation Efforts (PECE) designed to provide guidance to the Service when making listing decisions. The intent of the CAS is to provide both the certainty that an effective conservation effort will be implemented as well as reasonable certainty that the described conservation effort will be effective. Therefore, successful implementation of the CAS should preclude the need to list the relict leopard frog under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act. Since approval of the CAS, all known natural populations of relict leopard frog have persisted, and six additional experimental populations have been successfully established. Experimental sites now hold approximately 80 percent of the relict leopard frog population, and the number of sites occupied by relict leopard frog has increased (RLFCT 2012). One of the primary goals of the CAS is to establish additional populations of relict leopard frog within its historic range to secure species persistence into the future. However, the CAS does not provide a mechanism to establish populations on non-Federal lands while providing regulatory assurances to the landowner in the event the species becomes listed in the future. Therefore, this Programmatic Candidate Conservation Agreement with Assurances has been developed to promote establishment of relict leopard frog populations on non-Federal land to meet the goals of the CAS and to provide regulatory assurances to potential non-Federal cooperators. The RLFCT meets twice a year ...