U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalizes first-of-its-kind strategy to protect 900 endangered species from herbicides

On Aug. 20, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released its final Herbicide Strategy, an unprecedented step in protecting over 900 federally endangered and threatened (listed) species from the potential impacts of herbicide, which are chemicals used to control weeds. EPA will use the strategy to identify measures to reduce the amount of herbicides exposure to these species when it registers new herbicides and when it reevaluates registered herbicides under a process called registration review. The final strategy incorporates a wide range of stakeholder input, ensuring EPA not only protects species but also preserves a wide range of pesticides for farmers and growers.

″Finalizing our first major strategy for endangered species is a historic step in EPA meeting its Endangered Species Act obligations,″ said Deputy Assistant Administrator for Pesticide Programs for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Jake Li. ″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.″

The Biden-Harris Administration’s new approaches for protecting endangered species, which include the Herbicide Strategy, have resolved multiple lawsuits against EPA. For decades, EPA has tried to comply with the Endangered Species Act (ESA) on a pesticide-by-pesticide, species-by-species basis. However, because this approach is very slow and costly, it resulted in litigation against the agency and uncertainty for users about the continued availability of many pesticides. At the beginning of 2021, EPA faced almost two dozen lawsuits covering thousands of pesticide products due to its longstanding failure to meet ESA obligations for pesticides. Some of these lawsuits resulted in courts removing pesticides from the market until EPA ensured the pesticides comply with the ESA. Now, all but one of those lawsuits has been resolved. 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, thus allowing EPA to protect listed species much faster.

In July 2023, EPA released a draft of this strategy for public comment. EPA received extensive comments, with many reiterating the importance of protecting listed species from herbicides but also minimizing impacts on farmers and other pesticide users. 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; and,

• 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.

EPA focused this strategy on conventional herbicides used in agriculture in the lower 48 states because the most herbicides are applied there. In 2022, approximately 264 million acres of cropland were treated with herbicides, according to the Census of Agriculture from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The number of cropland acres treated with herbicides has remained fairly consistent since the early 2010s. EPA is also focusing this strategy on species listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) because herbicides generally impact those species. For species listed by the National Marine Fisheries Service, EPA is addressing pesticide impacts through a separate initiative with that agency.

Final Herbicide Strategy

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 measures include cover crops, conservation tillage, windbreaks, and adjuvants. Further, some measures, such as berms, are enough to fully address runoff concerns. Growers who already use those measures will not need any other runoff measures. EPA identified these options for growers through its collaborations with USDA under its February 2024 interagency MOU and through over two dozen meetings and workshops with agricultural groups in 2024 alone. 

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. These conservation programs include the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service practices and state or private stewardship measures that are effective at reducing pesticide runoff. The strategy reduces the level of mitigation needed for applicators who employ a specialist or participate in a program. Geographic characteristics may also reduce the level of mitigation needed, such as farming in an area with flat lands, or with minimal rain such as western U.S. counties that are in the driest climates. As a result, in many of those counties, a grower may need to undertake few or no additional runoff mitigations for herbicides that are not very toxic to listed species. 

The final strategy uses the most updated information and processes to determine whether an herbicide will impact a listed species and identify protections to address any impacts. To determine impacts, the strategy considers where a species lives, what it needs to survive (for example for 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 allow EPA to focus restrictions only in situations where they are needed.

The final strategy will also expedite how EPA complies with the ESA through future consultations with FWS by identifying mitigations to address the potential impacts of each herbicide on listed species even before the agency completes the consultation process for that herbicide—which in many cases, can take five years or more. Further, EPA and FWS expect to formalize their understanding of how this strategy can inform and streamline future ESA consultations for herbicides.

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 understands that the spray drift and runoff mitigation from the strategy can be complicated for some pesticide users to adopt for the first time. 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 and plans to periodically update with additional mitigation options, allowing applicators to use the most up-to-date mitigations without requiring pesticide product labels to be amended each time new measures become available. 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. EPA will also continue to develop educational and outreach materials to inform the public and help applicators understand mitigation needs and where descriptions of mitigations are located.

The Final Herbicide Strategy and accompanying support documents are available in docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2023-0365 at the Regulations.gov page.

Visit EPA’s website to learn more about how EPA’s pesticide program is protecting endangered species.