IARN — American farmers are again at odds with the Environmental Protection Agency over the Endangered Species Act. The final EPA biological evaluations of neonicotinoids (Nee-oh-ni-KOH-ti-noids) and their impacts on endangered species are overly conservative and don’t use all available data. Grower groups like the American Soybean Association and the American Farm Bureau Federation are concerned the evaluations drastically overstate the impact of the pesticides on endangered species and their habitats.
The groups say the evaluations for several neonicotinoid pesticides don’t incorporate scientific and commercial data that could have provided a more realistic picture of the potential impacts of the chemistries on different species. The groups pointed out the shortcomings during the public comment period, but EPA doubled down on the final evaluations. “Growers have, time-and-again, pointed EPA to real-world data to improve their endangered species assessments,” says American Soybean Association President Brad Doyle. “The agency has again chosen to disregard the data.”
Story courtesy of the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network.
Photo courtesy of Bayer Crop Science
