EPA Finalizes Endangered Species Herbicide Strategy

Agri-Pulse’s Steve Davies reported Tuesday that “EPA’s final herbicide strategy, designed to protect more than 900 species listed as threatened or endangered, includes more options for growers and reduces the burden on applicators compared to the draft released last year, the agency said Tuesday.”

“EPA identified a handful of mitigation measures that, when used on a field by themselves, ‘would result in runoff/erosion exposures that would not likely have a potential for population-level impacts’ to listed species. They are: systems with permanent berms; tailwater return systems, and subsurface tile drains, with controlled drainage structures,” Davies reported. “The strategy also says ‘growers/applicators that work with a runoff/erosion specialist or participate in a conservation program would likely achieve higher-than-average mitigation measure efficacy and benefits of mitigation tracking.'”

“‘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,’ EPA said in a news release,'” according to Davies’ reporting. “‘The measures include cover crops, conservation tillage, windbreaks, and adjuvants.'”

AgWeb’s Cheyenne Kramer reported that “the final strategy itself does not impose any requirements or restrictions on pesticide use and will be used to inform mitigations for new active ingredient registrations and registration review of conventional herbicides. To help applicators consider their mitigation options, EPA is developing a mitigation menu website that the agency will release this fall, as well as a calculator applicators can use to help determine what further mitigation measures, if any, they may need in addition to what they already have in place.”

Progressive Farmer’s Jason Jenkins reported that Jake Li, deputy assistant administrator for Pesticide Programs for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention said in a news release that “finalizing our first major strategy for endangered species is a historic step in EPA meeting its Endangered Species Act obligations. By identifying protections earlier in the pesticide review process, we are far more efficiently protecting listed species from the millions of pounds of herbicides applied each year and reducing burdensome uncertainty for the farmers that use them.”

How Industry Groups Are Reacting

Successful Farming’s Chelsea Dinterman reported that “several weeks ago, more than 300 industry groups penned a letter to the EPA outlining concerns that the agency’s current process is unduly conservative, greatly overestimates risks, and demands farmers adopt far more restrictions than are truly necessary to protect species. These groups claim the final strategy does little to address these concerns.”

“Soybean growers are wary of the feasibility of implementing the new strategy and its potential impacts,” Dinterman reported.

Dinterman reported that Josh Gackle, American Soybean Association president, said in a news release that “while there are clear improvements to the final Herbicide Strategy over what was first proposed, we are disappointed EPA chose to leave so many opportunities on the table to make this strategy workable for U.S. agriculture. We remain concerned with the complexity of this framework and whether growers and applicators will be able to clearly understand how to implement it.”

Kramer reported that Agricultural Retailers Association senior vice president of public policy & counsel Richard Gupton said in a statement that “ARA plans to review the EPA’s final Herbicide Strategy issued today to gain a better understanding of the full impact it will have on America’s agricultural industry. We appreciate the EPA’s efforts to make continuous improvements to earlier drafts that would have been unworkable for agricultural retailers, pesticide applicators and farmers.”