Both industry and environmentalist groups are generally pleased with a final strategy released by the Environmental Protection Agency that outlines how growers can address the impact of insecticide use on endangered species.
In a way, it’s a watershed moment in the evolution of the Endangered Species Act and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, two laws that with very different purposes.
The ESA is considered one of the most far-reaching laws to ever address protection of imperiled species and their habitats, even though its implementation has been criticized by both green groups and a broad range of business sectors, including agriculture. FIFRA, on the other hand, is a cost-benefit statute designed to get as many chemical tools in the hands of growers as possible.
EPA, however, has for decades ignored its obligation under the ESA to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service on the effects of pesticides – including herbicides, which already have gotten their own strategy – on federally listed species.
That led to a lawsuits challenging that failure that targeted 382 chemicals brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, leading to a settlement requiring the development of strategies for different categories of crop protection tools.
Like its herbicide strategy, released last year, the insecticide strategy assigns points to different conservation practices and application techniques that growers accumulate to allow them to apply pest-killing chemicals without further mitigation.
The insecticide strategy expands the number of conservation practices and other ways growers can earn points. For example, it designates as an EPA-qualified program a USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service program standard – the CPS 595 Pest Management Conservation System for planning runoff/erosion mitigation for agriculture.
“EPA will continue to develop a process to identify, evaluate, and communicate qualified programs,” the strategy says.
EPA also “narrowed the list of specific invertebrate species that could occur on agricultural fields with potential population-level impacts.”
The agency eliminated Bartram’s scrub-hairstreak butterfly in South Florida; the Kern primrose sphinx moth (Kern County, California); the delta green ground beetle (Solano County, California); valley elderberry longhorn beetle (Central Valley of California); American burying beetle (35 states) and Salt Creek tiger beetle (Lancaster and Saunders counties, Nebraska). The strategy added the Dakota skipper, a butterfly, to the list; its "most significant populations may be in North Dakota, northeastern South Dakota, western Minnesota and southern Manitoba," the Fish and Wildlife Service says.
Kyle Kunkler (ASA photo)The reaction from grower and other agribusiness groups was positive, though they also said they wanted to see improvements down the road.
The American Soybean Association’s president, Caleb Ragland, said ASA “appreciates EPA incorporating common-sense improvements” into the strategy, especially considering the Trump administration had little time to meet a court deadline to finalize it.
Nevertheless, Ragland said “work remains to be done, including reforming how EPA assesses risks to species to ensure the process is using the best available science.”
That, however, is longer-term goal.
“We saw additional mitigation added to the list [and] we saw them signal that they're working to develop mobile-friendly resources and working to aggregate available resources, so it's a more user-friendly experience,” said Kyle Kunkler, ASA senior director of government affairs.
He applauded the agency’s willingness to take into account grower participation in conservation programs to earn points.
“We want to make sure farmers who are already doing work, that they're getting credit for [that] work, especially if they're in a conservation plan that's going to have a protective effect for listed species,” he said.
EPA also said it will continue to look for ways to ease the burden on growers. "EPA recognizes that in some circumstances (e.g., systemic and persistent insecticides or when pest pressures are high during blooming periods), on-field mitigations may be very difficult to implement," it says. "EPA is committed to working with pesticide registrants and growers to develop offsets that may be used instead of on-field mitigations.”
ASA and many of the groups quoted by EPA in a news release announcing the strategy expressed similar sentiments. They are pleased the agency said it would keep working to refine the strategy when it comes to implementing it through labels for new active ingredients and products going through registration review.
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The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture "is eager to continue to work with EPA to ensure state lead agencies have the resources and clarity to meaningfully enforce this strategy,” NASDA CEO Ted McKinney said.
And American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall urged EPA “to continue to refine and improve upon the plan.”
"They're eager to work with us to continue to identify continued improvements that can be made to this process moving forward, and we're going to have a bunch of opportunities for that in individual registration decisions that we'll be commenting on in the months to come," Kunkler said.
Industry critic welcomes ag support for species protection
The Center for Biological Diversity, which reached a settlement in 2023 with EPA, CropLife America, other pesticide associations and the American Chemistry Council to complete the insecticide strategy – as well as herbicide, fungicide and rodenticide strategies – also will be commenting on registrations.
CBD also said it was pleased with the final document. The lawsuit resulting in the settlement was filed in 2011. Nathan Donley, science director for the CBD Environmental Health Program, called it “mind-boggling to see every single big hitter in the ag space talking about the importance of protecting species. It hasn't always been that way.”
Nathan Donley (Lester Tsai photo)But, he added, “it's just great to see that we're still moving along with compliance with the Endangered Species Act," noting in particular the importance of finishing the strategy by the court-ordered deadline of April 30, “which is really important, and still release an insecticide strategy that I would say is largely intact.” Donley was critical of the final strategy’s sharp reduction in no-spray buffer distances for ground and air-blast applications to protect species particularly at risk of “population-level impacts.”“It's really … taking protections away from some of the most vulnerable species to insecticides,” Donley said. At the same time, he said that in practice, growers should be able to easily accumulate enough points through mitigation measures such as boom height, droplet size and hooded sprayers, to reduce the buffers to zero.
Donley noted the aerial no-spray buffer distances “were largely kept intact, which is good to see, because I would say that's certainly the most worrisome application method in terms of spray drift.”
The strategy said EPA reduced the distances after “additional scientific literature and analyses.” Kunkler said “there's evidence and data” to support the changes.
“This was an incremental step and improvement towards addressing lingering challenges with spray drift buffers and making sure farmers aren't going to leave enormous swaths of their field untreated,” Kunkler said.
The actual application of the strategy will occur as new active ingredients are registered and older ones complete registration review.
“I expect that we'll see new active ingredients come first,” Kunkler said. In addition to usually having a reduced ecological footprint, “you’re also not trying to figure out – okay, I have millions of farmers already using this. How can I put in place necessary protections that aren't going to impede their ability to continue to use it?”
EPA has 268 active ingredients under registration review.
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