WAWG
In late July, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its draft Insecticide Strategy for public comment. The draft strategy identifies protections that EPA will consider when it registers a new insecticide or reevaluates an existing one. In developing this draft strategy, EPA identified protections to address potential impacts for more than 850 species listed by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS).
“Ensuring the safe use of insecticides is a critical part of EPA’s mission to protect endangered species and the environment,” said Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pesticide Programs for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Jake Li. “This draft strategy is another major step in the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to protect endangered species, support farmers and other insecticide users, and provide critical environmental protections for communities across the country.”
The insecticide application draft is part of EPA’s ongoing efforts to develop a more efficient, effective, and protective multichemical, multispecies approach to meeting its obligations under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). EPA focused the draft strategy on conventional insecticides used in agriculture in the lower 48 states, where approximately 34 million pounds of insecticides are applied each year. The draft identifies protections earlier in the pesticide review process, thus creating a far more efficient approach to evaluate and protect the FWS-listed species that live near these agricultural areas.
This draft strategy also incorporates lessons learned from EPA’s draft herbicide strategy that the agency released last year to minimize the impacts of agricultural herbicides on listed species. For example, based on feedback on the draft herbicide strategy, EPA designed the mitigations in the draft insecticide strategy to maximize the number of options for farmers and other pesticide users. These mitigation options also consider farmers who are already implementing measures to reduce pesticide runoff and those who are located in areas less prone to pesticide runoff, such as flat lands and regions with less rain to carry pesticides off fields. These measures also include the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Resources Conservation Service practices and state or private stewardship measures that are effective at reducing pesticide runoff.
Similar to the herbicide strategy, the draft insecticide strategy uses the most updated information and processes to determine whether an insecticide will impact a listed species and identify protections to address any impacts. To determine impacts, the draft strategy considers where a species lives, what it needs to reproduce (e.g., food or pollinators), where the pesticide will end up in the environment, and what kind of impacts the pesticide might have if it reaches the species. These refinements greatly reduce the need for pesticide restrictions in situations that do not benefit species.
Once final, the insecticide strategy will expedite future ESA consultations with FWS. In the draft strategy, EPA identified mitigations to address the potential impacts of insecticides on listed species even before EPA completes the ESA consultation process, which in many cases, can take five years or more. Further, once EPA finalizes the Insecticide Strategy, the agency and FWS expect to formalize their understanding of how this strategy can inform and streamline future ESA consultations for insecticides. Through a separate initiative, EPA is addressing potential impacts of insecticides to listed species and critical habitats protected by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
The draft Insecticide Strategy Framework and accompanying support documents are available in docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2024-0299 for public comment for 60 days.
Visit EPA’s website to learn more about how EPA’s pesticide program is protecting endangered species.