EPA insecticide strategy draft open for public comment

LOGO: EPA

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) opened a public comment docket for its Draft Insecticide Strategy to Reduce Exposures of Federally Listed Endangered and Threatened Species and Designated Critical Habitats from the Use of Conventional Agricultural Insecticides (IS). This is one of a series of strategies the EPA is developing to group mitigations by pesticide type, use site, location or other consideration to meet Endangered Species Act (ESA) obligations within the pesticide program.

The draft Insecticide Strategy (IS) describes the analyses conducted to estimate exposure and assess:

1. The potential impacts, both directly and indirectly, of an insecticide to listed species groups.
2. The extent of mitigations needed to reduce population-level impacts on the listed species groups.

The draft IS is informed by a mitigation support document that includes various measures in a menu to reduce exposure to listed species from spray drift, runoff and erosion. These mitigation measures apply to conventional agricultural pesticides covered by both the draft IS and Herbicide Strategy.

Finally, the draft IS provides information on identifying the geographic extent of mitigation and describes the implementation plan for the Strategy.

The draft IS focuses on developing and implementing early protections for more than 850 federally threatened and endangered species (listed) and designated critical habitats from the potential exposure from the use of conventional insecticides with agricultural uses in the lower 48 states.

While specialty product uses are not included in this IS, Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment (RISE) commented and said it will review the IS within the context of EPA’s overall approach to agricultural and specific specialty pesticide uses that are included in other strategies and pilots. For example, specialty applications for mosquito adulticides, rights-of-way, forestry and rangeland are included in the separate Vulnerable Species Pilot (VSP) and rodenticides are being addressed separately.

The 60-day public comment period will close Sept. 23.