The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its long-awaited Insecticide Strategy in late April, identifying protections for endangered species while aiming to ease burdens on American farmers using pesticides. The final plan’s release came just one day before a court-mandated deadline, and follows a controversial draft strategy released last July.
The final strategy, published April 29, identifies protections for endangered and threatened species listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) from the use of insecticides. The plan evaluates mitigation plans to protect more than 900 species listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that EPA considers when registering a new insecticide or reevaluating an existing one.
“We have found common sense ways to keep endangered species safe that won’t place unneeded burden on the growers who rely on these tools for their livelihood, and which are necessary to ensure a safe and plentiful food supply,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in a news release.
The plan builds on Zeldin’s “Powering the Great American Comeback Initiative,” which intends to protect human health and the environment while still energizing the American economy. The Insecticide Strategy specifically builds on the third pillar of his initiative, which includes permitting reform, cooperative federalism and cross-agency partnership.
The final plan was developed following a settlement with the Pesticide Action Network and the Center for Biological Diversity, which claimed EPA was violating the ESA by not evaluating how each pesticide was impacting endangered species.
EPA said it will continue to work with stakeholders to modify and update the plan as additional information becomes available.
Details and background
The finalized strategy does not impose any new requirements on insecticide users but rather provides guidelines that EPA will consider. The Insecticide Strategy covers conventional insecticides, insect growth regulators, nematicides and miticides, all of which are commonly used in agriculture.
“The Insecticide Strategy would provide early protections for the listed species most impacted by insecticides even before effects determinations are made or consultations are completed,” the strategy read.
This would then speed up EPA’s ability to meet its ESA obligations, reducing the legal liability associated with EPA’s pesticide decisions and ensuring the continued availability of pesticides, the agency said.
The draft Insecticide Strategy was released last July and received more than 26,000 comments during a 60-day comment period. Following public input, EPA said it made several updates to the strategy to provide more flexibility for the agricultural community. Some of the updates include:
• Reducing buffer distances across all application methods.
• Providing credit for any reduction in the proportion of a treated field for ground applications.
• Qualifying conservation programs that will give growers more credit for being part of a conservation program.
• Qualifying external parties that would assess a grower’s farm and determine the existing mitigation points that could be achieved by practices a grower already has in place.
• Updating key data sources and identification of invertebrate species that may be on agricultural fields.
• Adding a Pesticide Use Limitation Area group for generalist species that reside in wetlands to reduce mitigations applied outside of wetland habitats.
Agriculture stakeholders largely responded positively to the finalized strategy.
“This strategy provides much needed improvements that will undoubtedly better protect U.S homegrown crops from pests and diseases,” said USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins.
National Association of State Departments of Agriculture CEO Ted McKinney said pragmatic improvements to the draft plan will make it easier for applicators to implement the strategy while protecting threatened and endangered species.
“We are grateful EPA has crafted this strategy by listening to, among others, constructive feedback from state agriculture departments, as they are the lead agency tasked with implementing and enforcing pesticide regulations in 43 states as well as the territory of Puerto Rico,” McKinney said.
The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) said frequent updates to the pesticide strategies are important to ensure the health and safety of Americans. “EPA understands there cannot be an effective conservation strategy as a nation without a meaningful partnership with farmers and ranchers,” said AFBF President Zippy Duvall. — Anna Miller Fortozo, WLJ managing editor
