SUMMARY:
The Department of the Interior (Department or DOI) is adopting the interim final rule (IFR) published on July 3, 2025, with minor changes, as final. In the IFR, DOI provided a 30-day comment period for the public to review and make comments. This final rule addresses public comments and adopts as final the IFR, with certain substantive changes as explained herein. The IFR partially rescinded DOI’s regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and made necessary targeted updates to those provisions that were not repealed. DOI will henceforth maintain the majority of its NEPA procedures—which apply only to DOI’s internal processes—in a Departmental Handbook separate from the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).
DOI is issuing this final rule to adopt as final, subject to the revisions made by this final rule, the IFR promulgated on July 3, 2025. The IFR partially rescinded and made other needed, targeted updates to DOI’s regulations, codified at 43 CFR part 46, implementing the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, 42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq., as amended (NEPA). DOI’s prior NEPA implementing regulations were promulgated in 2008 “as a “supplement[ ] . . . to be used in conjunction with” the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)’s NEPA regulations. 43 CFR 46.20 (2008). DOI provided that the “[p]urpose of this part” was to ensure “compliance with” not only NEPA itself but CEQ’s regulations implementing NEPA. 43 CFR 46.10(a)(2) (2008). However, CEQ has now repealed its residual regulations, effective as of April 11, 2025. See Removal of National Environmental Policy Act Implementing Regulations,90 FR 10,610 (February 25, 2025); Final Rule Removal of National Environmental Policy Act Implementing Regulations,91 FR 618 (January 8, 2026).
