EPA's Vessel General Permit and Small Vessel General

areas compared to historical conditions. Although many of the factors that can negatively affect
Johnson’s seagrass and their habitat are generally well regulated and enforced, the species is still
under threat from high development pressure and subsequent habitat degradation throughout its
range.
Environmental Baseline
By regulation, environmental baselines for Biological Opinions include the past and present
impacts of all state, Federal or private actions and other human activities in the action area, the
anticipated impacts of all proposed Federal projects in the action area that have already
undergone formal or early Section 7 consultation, and the impact of State or private actions
which are contemporaneous with the consultation in process (50 CFR 402.02). The
environmental baseline for this Biological Opinion includes the effects of several activities that
affect the survival and recovery of endangered and threatened in the Action Area.
A number of human activities have contributed to the current status of populations of endangered
and threatened species in the action area. Some of those activities, most notably commercial
whaling, occurred extensively in the past, ended, and no longer appear to affect populations of
these species, although the effects of these reductions likely persist today. Other human
activities are ongoing and appear to continue to affect populations of endangered and threatened
species in the Action Area. The following discussion summarizes the principal phenomena in
the Action Area that are known to affect the likelihood that these endangered and threatened
species will survive and recover in the wild.
Because this is a programmatic consultation on a continuing action with a geographic scope that
encompasses all waters of the United States, its territories and possessions, this Environmental
Baseline serves a slightly different purpose. First, because this is both a programmatic and
national consultation that does not assess the consequences of EPA’s proposed VGPs for specific
sites or listed resources that occur at those sites, this Environmental Baseline focuses primarily
on the status and trends of the aquatic ecosystems in the United States and the consequences of
that status for listed resources. As such, this Environmental Baseline elaborates on some of the
narratives we have already presented in our treatments of the Status of Listed resources by
focusing on the status and trends of waters of the United States at a national scale.
We begin this Environmental Baseline with a discussion of the status and trends of waters of the
United States. Because the status and trends of those waters, and the endangered and threatened
species that depend on them, has been strongly influenced by wetland ecosystems in the United
States, we summarize the status and trends of wetlands in the United States as a second step. We
summarize large-scale impacts to coastal and wetland habitat, including aquatic nuisance
species, pollutants, and the impacts of global climate change. Then we summarize the effect of
Federal programs designed to protect and restore waters of the United States. We conclude by
integrating and synthesizing this information to assess the effect of these programs on
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