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# How We Handle Your Comments

## **How the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) processes public comments and handles your personal information.**

FWS does not require individuals to provide any personal information to submit a comment. However, some personally identifiable information such as a submitter’s first and last name will be made public if provided. The comment form on Regulations.gov includes a Posting Guidelines notice that explains this policy:

### Posting Guidelines

PLEASE COPY DOWN YOUR TRACKING NUMBER. Use this tracking number to search for and find your comment on Regulations.gov.

**If you submit a comment, your entire comment--including any personal identifying information--may be available to the public. If you submit a comment that includes personal identifying information, you may request that we withhold the information from public review, but we cannot guarantee that we will be able to do so.**

FWS accepts Anonymous comments. Public submissions without first and last names appear with the title “Comment from Anonymous”. 

FWS reviews and posts comments within 24-48 hours, depending on the volume of comments received. 

#### How much of my personally identifiable information will appear on Regulations.gov? 

If you choose to provide personally identifiable information in the Regulations.gov comment form, only the following information appears publicly on Regulations.gov: 
                        - **Name.** Submitter’s first and last name
                        - City.   Submitter’s City
                        - **Country.** Submitter’s Country
                        - **State or Province.** Submitter’s State
                        - Zip Code. Submitter’s ZIP/Postal Code
                        - **Organization.** Submitter’s Organization (e.g., advocacy group, industry association)
                        - **Submitter’s Representative.** Name of person entering the comment on Regulations.gov if different from submitter.
                        - **Government Agency Type.** Type of government agency the submitter represents (e.g., Federal, Tribal, State, or local governments).
                        - **Government Agency.** Name of the government agency that the submitter represents.
                        - **Comment.** Text of comment from submitter.

For comments submitted via Regulations.gov, FWS does not post your email address, phone number, or street address to Regulations.gov. If you choose to provide this information, only FWS personnel can access it. 

Please note, if you include any personally identifiable information in the comment text, as part of  an attachment (MS Word doc, Adobe PDF, MS Excel, etc.) uploaded to Regulations.gov, or in hardcopy letters, FWS does not guarantee we will be able to withhold that data.

#### How will my comment appear on Regulations.gov?

Below is an example of a public comment from an individual submitter. Personally identifiable information is visible in the lower left side of the screen under “Submitter Info.” 

Image Details

FWS staff review and post comments several times a day to ensure every docket open for comment is up to date. You can search for your comment by using the tracking number provided by Regulations.gov. 

#### Does FWS censor my comment?

FWS does not alter comments received, but we may redact sensitive information identified by FWS program staff, FWS law enforcement, and the DOI Solicitor. Any comments redacted to withhold sensitive information are clearly marked in Regulations.gov. 

#### What comments does FWS not post on Regulations.gov?

Comments received from Department of the Interior bureaus and FWS or DOI Federal advisory councils are for internal review only. FWS does not post these comments publicly on Regulations.gov. 

#### I signed an advocacy group’s public comment petition; how can I find my comment? 

Advocacy groups frequently submit public comment petitions for FWS proposed actions. These groups provide petitions or mass mail campaigns to FWS in a variety of ways. Commonly, groups submit their petitions as attachments to a single comment in Regulations.gov and indicate the total number of signatures either in the text of the comment or by updating the “Number of Duplicate Submissions” field on the comment form.  In these instances, your information (as you provided it on the petition) will appear only in the provided attachment. 

FWS also receives mass letter campaigns via U.S. mail or electronic forms outside of Regulations.gov. For these campaigns, FWS staff scan and upload a sample letter to the docket in Regulations.gov. The organizing group’s information appears as the submitter information, and FWS maintains an ongoing count of the total number of letters received in the “Number of Duplicate Submissions” field. You can verify that FWS received an organization’s mass mail campaign by searching for the organization’s name in Regulations.gov. 

#### There is an error in my posted comment; how do I update it?

Members of the public and agency staff cannot edit a comment after it is posted to Regulations.gov. If you identify an error in the posted comment, contact the eRulemaking helpdesk. 

#### What does the “Comments Received” total mean on Regulations.gov?

Regulations.gov updates the total number of comments received for each *Federal Register* document once a day. This count includes all individual public submissions and identified mass mail campaigns. Mass mail campaigns and petitions often consist of a form letter with multiple attachments; the Comments Received total counts each signatory to the petition or form letter separately. As a result, the Comments Received total often appears higher than the number of comments viewable in the “Browse Comments” tab in a docket. This discrepancy is not an error but a helpful way to indicate the overall total of comments received. 

#### What metadata fields are included in bulk downloads of public comments using the Regulations.gov Application Programming Interface (API)?

As part of the Open GSA plan, the eRulemaking team offers an application programming interface (API) to post and download comments in bulk. Open GSA has more information and instructions on how to use this API. 

Data downloaded from Regulations.gov is limited to only publicly posted information. For comments submitted to FWS, the only data included in a bulk download are the comment text and some personally identifiable information provided by the submitter. Below is a list of all the metadata fields and their descriptions that may appear in a bulk download using the API. Note that FWS does not require any personal information from a submitter, so the data available on Regulations.gov may be incomplete. FWS does not verify the accuracy of the submitter information displayed on Regulations.gov. 
                        - **Name.** Submitter’s first and last name
                        - City.   Submitter’s City
                        - **Country.** Submitter’s Country
                        - **State or Province.** Submitter’s State
                        - Zip Code. Submitter’s ZIP/Postal Code
                        - **Organization.** Submitter’s Organization (e.g., advocacy group, industry association)
                        - **Submitter’s Representative.** Name of person entering the comment on Regulations.gov if different from submitter.
                        - **Government Agency Type.** Type of government agency the submitter represents (e.g., Federal, Tribal, State, or local governments).
                        - **Government Agency.** Name of the government agency that the submitter represents.
                        - **Comment.** Text of comment from submitter.

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