A U.S. federal judge recently ordered the Trump administration’s Fish and Wildlife Service to complete assessments on the impacts of six pesticides and the steps needed to protect endangered species from them.
This isn’t the first time pesticide safety has come before the Trump administration. In 2017, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) conducted an analysis revealing that two pesticides — malathion and chlorpyrifos — were so toxic they posed an existential threat to more than 1,200 endangered animal and plant species, according to an investigation by The New York Times.
However, just before the report’s release, political appointees in the Department of the Interior, which oversees the FWS, blocked its publication and initiated a new process designed to apply a much narrower standard that could downplay the hazards of the pesticides, the Times investigation noted.
Assessments by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2017 and 2021 found each of the six pesticides in question pose significant harm to many of the roughly 1,800 plant and animal species protected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA). According to a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity, an NGO, chlorpyrifos is likely to harm 97% of endangered species, diazinon 78%, carbaryl 91%, atrazine 56% and simazine 55% and methomyl 61%.
The ESA requires that the FWS review the EPA’s assessment and propose a strategy to prevent species from going extinct. The agency hadn’t issued its final biological opinion by 2022, so the Center for Biological Diversity sued the FWS that year. On March 13 this year, a federal judge ruled that the FWS must issue a final biological opinion and assess next steps to prevent extinctions.
Insects and amphibians are particularly vulnerable to pesticides, says Jonathan Evans, the environmental health legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. Even some mammal species, including the red wolf (Canis rufus), are at risk as pesticides bioaccumulate in the bodies of their prey.
To reduce exposure and mitigate harm to wildlife, Evans says the government can require larger buffer areas between where pesticides are applied and endangered species habitat, especially waterways.
The first biological opinion from the FWS is due by March 31, and all of them must be completed by September 2028. However, the Trump administration has demonstrated a lack of compliance with other court orders, and roughly 400 FWS employees were fired as part of the recent government downsizing, potentially making compliance challenging.
“We are all certainly concerned about the state of our government to run efficiently and effectively but we need to continue pursuing actions to uphold our laws and protect the environment and the wildlife that we hold dear,” Evans says.
Mongabay reached out to pesticide industry trade groups the American Chemistry Council, which declined to comment, and CropLife, which didn’t reply by the time of publication.
Banner image of a red wolf by LaggedOnUser via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).
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