EPA’s plan to protect species from insecticides draws unusual support

After decades of debate in the US over how to manage insecticides’ unintended harms to endangered species, farm groups are supporting the US Environmental Protection Agency’s latest strategy to protect more than 900 species. The plan, released April 29, updates a draft version released in July 2024.

Conservation groups, which have been at odds with the EPA, farm groups, and others for decades over how to protect endangered species from insecticides, generally welcomed the strategy and the farm groups’ support of it.

The strategy does not impose any new requirements on farmers and other users of insecticides, but it provides guidelines that the EPA will consider when it registers new pesticides or re-registers pesticides already on the market, the agency says in a press release.

The EPA made several changes to the strategy in response to public comments from farm groups, state agriculture departments, and environmental organizations.

Specifically, the agency added new options for mitigating insecticides’ spray drift, runoff into waterways, and soil erosion. The strategy decreases the distance required between endangered species’ habitats and areas where insecticides are sprayed in certain situations, such as when growers have implemented measures to reduce runoff, when they are in areas not prone to runoff, or when they use other measures to reduce pesticide drift. The strategy also updates data on invertebrate species living on agricultural fields. The EPA says it plans to add mitigation options in the future, when appropriate.

“We have found commonsense 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,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin says in the press release. “We are committed to ensuring the agriculture community has the tools they need to protect our country, especially our food supply, from pests and diseases.”

Farm groups representing growers of commodity crops, like corn, soybeans, cotton, and rice, welcome the new strategy.

“By updating buffer distances, tailoring mitigation to real-world conditions, and recognizing conservation efforts, the new strategy strengthens environmental protections without compromising our nation’s safe and secure supply of food, feed and fiber,” Patrick Johnson Jr., a cotton producer in Mississippi and chair of the National Cotton Council, says in the EPA’s press release.

State agriculture departments and the US Department of Agriculture also praised the EPA’s strategy in the same press release.

In general, environmental advocates are pleased that the agriculture industry has acknowledged that requirements under the Endangered Species Act apply to pesticide regulation. Farm groups have fought those requirements for decades.

“I’m heartened to see the nation’s largest agricultural interests extolling the EPA’s efforts to finally comply with the Endangered Species Act and enact commonsense measures to protect our most imperiled plants and animals from dangerous insecticides,” says Lori Ann Burd, environmental health program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “I wish the final insecticide strategy was more robust, and we’ll push hard for stronger protections in the upcoming decisions applying the strategy to individual chemicals. But the agricultural community’s support of efforts to protect endangered species from pesticides is an extremely important step forward.”

Environmental groups have repeatedly sued the EPA for not consulting with the Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service when a pesticide has the potential to harm endangered species or their habitats. Under various legal settlements over the last decade, the EPA agreed to evaluate a handful of pesticides for their potential to harm endangered species. The agency is working its way through those evaluations.

Last month, the EPA announced multiple actions to protect endangered species from one of those pesticides—carbaryl, a carbamate insecticide. Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, says the measures “will reduce the risks this dangerous pesticide poses to endangered plants and animals and provide clarity for the industrial farming community about how to use it.”

The EPA’s recent actions to protect endangered species from pesticides are good news, Donley says. “This endangered species process has been evolving over a decade now, and lots of stakeholders have been working for years together to get this process off the ground. No one is 100% happy with it, but it's working, and everyone is working together,” he says. “There doesn't seem to be political meddling at this point, which is certainly cause for hope.”