21 Aug EPA Releases Final Herbicide Strategy
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released its final Herbicide Strategy, which is designed to protect over 900 federally endangered and threatened (listed) species from the potential impacts of herbicide.
The EPA indicated it 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 under a process called registration review.
The agency says the final strategy incorporates a wide range of stakeholder input that will protect species but also preserve a wide range of pesticides for farmers and growers.
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 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 mitigation options, EPA is developing a mitigation menu website to be released in fall 2024 and plans to periodically update it 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 to help applicators 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.
Review the Final Herbicide Strategy and supporting documents in docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2023-0365 at the Regulations.gov page.