Georgia has 151 counties with federally listed endangered species. It has eight counties that don’t have an endangered species within its border. Most Southern states are similar, with many counties home to an endangered species. It may be a plant, insect, fish or mammal, but it’s something, and it’s there.

The Endangered Species Act was born in 1973. A good year, and not a bad act. It provides a framework to conserve and protect endangered and threatened species and their habitats. The act has been the vehicle to do some good things and protects some good species.

Conservation groups often go after EPA. That’s nothing new. But recent court decisions and policitacl shifts have given well-heeled conservation and environmental groups more fodder and powder to go harder after the agency, particularly how the agency reviews and determines how a chemistry may impact a federally endangered species. The argument is the agency has not maintained the spirit of Section 7 of the ESA. Called the ‘Interagency Cooperation,” Section 7 is the mechanism to ensure the actions federal agencies take, including those they fund or authorize, do not jeopardize the continued existence of any listed endangered species.

The stage is set for conservation groups to fire more holes into the process and how pesticides are regulated and used, or not used, including ones important to agriculture.

Some essential agricultural products for the Southeast, just like the rest of the nation, include endangered species buffer zones to help keep the product on target and away from natural areas and endangered species, and applicators are required by law to follow them.

ESA Buffer Zones

During the annual Southeast Fruit and Vegetable Conference in January, Stanley Culpepper, UGA Extension weed specialist, provided an example of how recently labeled ESA buffer requirements for an important herbicide would affect the percentage of acres the herbicide could legally be applied on a real-life Georgia farm. The buffers included a 310-foot down-wind buffer and a 57-foot omnidirectional buffer zone from wood lines. For a larger field on the farm, the herbicide could not be applied to a third of the acres around the field’s edge. For a group of smaller fields on the farm, the herbicide could not be applied on as much as 50% of the fields’ acreage. That’s not sustainable agriculture.

The door is open now and forcing EPA to reexamine its decision process and buffer requirements for about 1,100 active ingredients.

Conservation groups acknowledge many species are endangered due to urban sprawl and lost habitat. But is anyone going to tell a homeowner to tear the house down or take a condo down? Likely not, but regulators can extend the ESA buffer zones, and that may make less of a farm legally available to apply the essential products needed to make sustainable decision for that farm. That’s bad.

Whether in front of the scene or behind it, reasoned heads must make rational decisions as the slippery slope of legal actions breathes new life into the Endangered Species Act.

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