August 2004
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Signs On to EPA’s Assessments
In late July, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)
finalized new regulations establishing for the first time a more efficient approach to ensure protection of threatened and endangered species as part of the EPA’s approval process for pest control products. The review process, which involves the EPA, USDA, and USFWS, will provide a workable and efficient framework to ensure necessary measure are taken to protect fish and wildlife.
Under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), EPA must consult with USFWS to ensure that registration of products under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of federally listed endangered or threatened species or result in the destruction or adverse modification of critical habitat. Because of the perceived complexity of the consultations, none had been done over the past decade. A court decision in 2003 cited the lack of these consultations as the basis for restricting the use of a number of pesticides along the Pacific coast of the U.S.
Scientists and regulators within the USFWS have spent the last year reviewing EPA’s approach to ecological risk assessment and offered recommendations that EPA has incorporated. Based on this review, together with an understanding of EPA’s considerable scientific expertise, the USFWS concluded that EPA’s approach to risk assessment will produce determinations that reliably assess the effects of these products on listed species and critical habitat.
By using the most sophisticated scientific methodologies available to protect wildlife from potential pesticide risks, EPA could determine that use of a pest-control product is “not likely to adversely affect” a listed species or its critical habitat without either concurrence of the USFWS or informal consultation. The USFWS would perform periodic reviews of the methods that EPA employs to arrive at these determinations to ensure EPA is making determinations that are consistent with the requirements of the ESA. When formal consultation is required, EPA may utilize an optional procedure to develop a review for the USFWS, or request direct involvement of the USFWS. The USFWS would then make the final determination on species status. (DOI Press Release, 7/29/04).
