Fecha de publicación: 21/08/2024 Fuente: California Agriculture Today Courtesy of the Western Ag Processors Association
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released its final Herbicide Strategy to protect over 900 federally endangered and threatened (listed) species from the potential impacts of herbicides. 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. 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 response to comments on the initial draft, 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.

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.  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.  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 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 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.
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