Consultation Initiation Template

April J. Wolstencroft
Northwest Region, NMFS

NOAA Fisheries Northwest Region (NWR) developed the Consultation Initiation Template and Users Guide. This document has been created to help Federal agencies, their delegated agents and consultants prepare and submit the information - generally known as biological assessments or biological evaluations (BA/BEs) - needed to request Endangered Species Act (ESA) consultations. NWR has developed a standardized template for BA/BEs to encourage consistency in format and content, to reduce our additional information requests and to facilitate and expedite our reviews.

The template is also a completion checklist that Federal agencies and NWR will use to ensure that all applicable information has been provided. When we determine that a BA/BE is complete we will notify the Federal agency that we have initiated consultation. Consultations can be tracked on our on-line tracking system PCTS.

NWR developed this standardized template to encourage consistency in applications, to facilitate and expedite its review of BA/BEs, and to provide guidance for the preparation of these documents. The template can also be used by Federal agencies for their recordkeeping. As NWR receives BA/BEs in the standard form it will provide links to BA/BEs and corresponding BOs in the same general vicinities and for similar actions.

The template has numerous sections and appears to ask for a great deal of information. It was designed to elicit as much information as possible - information NWR has typically found missing in BA/BEs. When information is missing, delays occur. NWR would like to receive complete BA/BEs so that it can start the consultation clock.

One of the strengths of the CIT system is the use of a database to store all the information being entered into the system. This includes detailed information about proposed Federal actions such as: type of action; project location (e.g. 5th field HUC, latitude and longitude, Section, Township, Range, etc.); lead action agency; listed species potentially present; effects determinations, Essential Fish Habitat information; and numerous other pieces of information about each consultation. The review comments and completed checklists are also stored in the database.

Effective and efficient regulatory programs are based on certainty, consistency and clearly stated requirements. This project is designed to facilitate the consultation process by providing accessible, standardized guidance using e-business tools.

Key goals:

" Provide clear, standardized guidance on information needs for a complete Consultation Initiation Package;

" Assure a consistent format;

" Reduce the need for additional information requests;

" Facilitate Biological Opinion development or concurrence letters;

" Link to Public Consultation Tracking System (PCTS) to allow the public and Action Agencies to know the status of their projects; and

" Establish a database to allow interactive searches for similar actions or action areas to provide a basis for newly proposed actions (being developed).