The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sent formal replies to the Center for Biological Diversity on their various petition requests under their Intent to Sue letter. In addition, USFWS also replied to the NSS - we had filed formal comments on the CBD petition.
Both of these documents are available under the Breaking News section of the NSS' WNS website.
Essentially, USFWS says it can only respond for USFWS, not the other petitioned federal agencies. It says that since it closed its Wildlife Refuge system, it did effectively respond for itself. It goes on further to say that CBD did not comply with the required format for promulgating administrative rules, and therefore denies the petition.
However, USFWS also goes on to say that it is continuing to review the caving advisory, and will be soliciting public comment. They also say that the redefining of "take" under the federal Endangered Species Act is not supported by current science, and that notifying all cave owners, public and private, is a practical impossibility.
In the reply to the NSS, USFWS simply refers to the reply to CBD, and then compliments the NSS for our history of cave conservation work, and tells us that they will be soliciting our input on the caving advisory.
We only have these letters in pdf format, so please go to
http://www.caves.org/WNS and scroll to Breaking News to read them.