The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Aug. 20 released its Final Herbicide Strategy to protect more than 900 federally endangered and threatened species from the potential impacts of herbicide. 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.
For decades, EPA has tried to comply with the Endangered Species Act (ESA) on a pesticide-by-pesticide, species-by-species basis. This approach is very slow and costly and resulted in litigation against the agency and uncertainty for users about the continued availability of many pesticides. Some of the litigation resulted in courts removing pesticides from the market until EPA ensured the pesticides comply with the ESA.
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.
DRAFT IMPROVEMENTS
In July 2023, EPA released a draft of this strategy for public comment. In response to comments, EPA made many improvements to the draft, with the primary changes falling into three categories:
- Making the strategy easier to understand and incorporating up-to-date data and refined analyses
- Increasing flexibility for pesticide users to implement mitigation measures in the strategy
- Reducing the amount of additional mitigation that may be needed when users either have already adopted accepted practices to reduce pesticide runoff or apply herbicides in an area where runoff potential is lower
MITIGATION MEASURES
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 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. The strategy reduces the level of mitigation needed for applicators who employ a specialist or participate in a program.
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 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. 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.
The Final Herbicide Strategy and accompanying support documents are available in docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2023-0365 at the Regulations.gov page.
Source: EPA
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