PESTICIDES REDUCTION

The country has learned a lot since Rachel Carson’s 1962 work Silent Spring alerted us to the hazards of poisonous chemicals. But pesticide use still poses major threats to imperiled wildlife and human health; in fact, since Carson’s book was published, annual pesticide use has continuously increased in both pounds applied and numbers of registered active ingredients. The Environmental Protection Agency has registered for use more than 18,000 pesticides, and more than 2 billion pounds of pesticides are sold annually in the United States. Shown to be pervasive in fish and wildlife habitat throughout the country, pesticides threaten the survival and recovery of numerous imperiled species, including more than 375 that are federally listed. These chemicals have been linked to declines of western amphibians and Pacific salmon, threaten sea turtles in Chesapeake Bay, and continue to kill bald eagles nationwide.

OUR CAMPAIGN

The Center’s Pesticides Reduction Campaign works to hold the Environmental Protection Agency accountable for pesticides it registers for use and to cancel or restrict use of harmful pesticides within endangered species’ habitats. We provide analysis and education regarding pesticides’ threats to humans, endangered species, and other wildlife. Our 2004 report details the EPA’s failure to regulate pesticides harmful to endangered species, while our 2006 report explains the risk pesticides pose to endangered species in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Formal consultation with the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service under the Endangered Species Act is the most effective means to cancel or constrain use of harmful pesticides registered by the Environmental Protection Agency. Consultation gives the agency comprehensive information from federally employed biologists about locations, population trends, and threats to the survival of imperiled species. Besides protecting endangered species by stopping the registration of pesticides that jeopardize them, consultation benefits public health by forcing the EPA to thoroughly assess pesticides’ harmful human impacts. Unfortunately, the agency hasn’t voluntarily completed a single consultation since 1993.

We and our allies have filed numerous lawsuits to drive consultations on pesticides’ endangered species impacts. Our most recent success came in July 2009, when we succeeded in halting herbicide spraying on 1.5 million acres of land in New Mexico. Another big victory came just a month before that when, in response to a Center lawsuit, the EPA proposed to formally evaluate the harmful effects of 74 pesticides on 11 endangered and threatened species in the Bay Area over the next five years — in the meantime imposing interim restrictions on the pesticides in and near endangered species’ habitat.


In 2002, we challenged the approval of 250 pesticides that may affect the California red-legged frog, and in 2003 we filed litigation concerning six pesticides threatening the Barton Springs salamander. In response to a lawsuit by a coalition of conservation, fishing, and pesticide-watchdog groups, a federal court recently found the EPA in clear violation of the Endangered Species Act for failing to protect listed salmon and steelhead trout species from pesticides. The court imposed no-spray zones to keep pesticides out of West Coast salmon streams.

Atrazine, a heavily used herbicide so dangerous that it was banned by the European Union, is linked to declines of endangered California amphibians, Chesapeake Bay sea turtles, Texas salamanders, Alabama mussels, and sturgeons in Midwest waters. But while the Fish and Wildlife Service requested in 2002 that the EPA consult on atrazine impacts on Texas’ endangered Barton Springs salamander, the agency showed its subservience to the agrochemical industries it was intended to regulate by revising its registration of the chemical in 2003. That August, conservationists sued the EPA for failing to consult on atrazine’s impacts to several federally listed species. But despite numerous studies and overwhelming evidence linking atrazine to significant human and wildlife health concerns — including endocrine disruption — the agency announced it would impose no new restrictions on its use.

The Center’s series of strategic legal challenges against the EPA seek to compel it to adhere to federal environmental law when registering pesticides. These actions will seek agency compliance regarding pesticide impacts to specific imperiled species, as well as programmatic changes in the EPA’s registration process.