EPA recently released a first-of-its-kind strategy to protect 900 endangered species from herbicides.
Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released its final Herbicide Strategy, an unprecedented step in protecting over 900 federally endangered and threatened (listed) species from the potential impacts of herbicides, which are chemicals used to control weeds. EPA will use the strategy to identify measures to reduce the amount of herbicide exposure to these species when it registers new herbicides and when it reevaluates registered herbicides under a process called registration review. The final strategy incorporates a wide range of stakeholder input, ensuring EPA not only protects species but also preserves a wide range of pesticides for farmers and growers.
The agency’s new approaches for protecting endangered species, which include the Herbicide Strategy, have resolved multiple lawsuits against EPA. For decades, EPA has tried to comply with the Endangered Species Act (ESA) on a pesticide-by-pesticide, species-by-species basis. However, because this approach is very slow and costly, it resulted in litigation and uncertainty about the continued availability of many pesticides. Unlike EPA’s historic approach to compliance, the Herbicide Strategy identifies protections for hundreds of listed species up front and will apply to thousands of pesticide products as they go through registration or registration review, thus allowing EPA to protect listed species much faster.
EPA focused their new strategy on conventional herbicides used in agriculture in the lower 48 states because the most herbicides are applied there. In 2022, approximately 264 million acres of cropland were treated with herbicides, according to the Census of Agriculture from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The number of cropland acres treated with herbicides has remained fairly consistent since the early 2010s. EPA is also focusing this strategy on species listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) because herbicides generally impact those species. For species listed by the National Marine Fisheries Service, EPA is addressing pesticide impacts through a separate initiative with that agency.
Highlights of the Final Herbicide Strategy
The final strategy includes more options for mitigation measures compared to the draft, while still protecting listed species. The strategy also reduces the level of mitigation needed for applicators who have already implemented measures identified in the strategy to reduce pesticide movement from treated fields into habitats through pesticide spray drift and runoff from a field. The measures include cover crops, conservation tillage, windbreaks, and adjuvants. Further, some measures, such as berms, are enough to fully address runoff concerns. Growers who already use those measures will not need any other runoff measures.
The final strategy also recognizes that applicators who work with a runoff/erosion specialist or participate in a conservation program are more likely to effectively implement mitigation measures. These conservation programs include the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service practices and state or private stewardship measures that are effective at reducing pesticide runoff. The strategy reduces the level of mitigation needed for applicators who employ a specialist or participate in a program. Geographic characteristics may also reduce the level of mitigation needed, such as farming in an area with flat lands, or with minimal rain such as western U.S. counties that are in the driest climates. As a result, in many of those counties, a grower may need to undertake few or no additional runoff mitigations for herbicides that are not very toxic to listed species.
The final strategy itself does not impose any requirements or restrictions on pesticide use. Rather, EPA will use the strategy to inform mitigations for new active ingredient registrations and registration review of conventional herbicides. EPA understands that the spray drift and runoff mitigation from the strategy can be complicated for some pesticide users to adopt for the first time. EPA has also developed a document that details multiple real-world examples of how a pesticide applicator could adopt the mitigation from this strategy when those measures appear on pesticide labels. To help applicators consider their mitigation options, EPA is developing a mitigation menu website that the agency will release in fall 2024 and plans to periodically update with additional mitigation options, allowing applicators to use the most up-to-date mitigations without requiring pesticide product labels to be amended each time new measures become available. EPA is also developing a calculator that applicators can use to help determine what further mitigation measures, if any, they may need to take in light of mitigations they may already have in place. EPA will also continue to develop educational and outreach materials to inform the public and help applicators understand mitigation needs and where descriptions of mitigations are located.
