Current and future regulatory decisions for agricultural chemistries now must include the Endangered Species Act.

“A lot of decisions this year with the EPA will address the Endangered Species Act with every product as it's registered or reregistered. And by addressing that act, there's some tremendous challenges that will be difficult for us (in agriculture),” said Stanley Culpepper, University of Georgia Extension weed specialist.

There are currently counties in Southeast and other regions that can’t use Enlist Duo due to reinvigorated ESA regulatory analysis.

“Enlist duo was the first product through to help us understand the process now, and it made it very clear to that if we can't develop an approach to get science involved in this decision making, we're in a lot of trouble,” he said.

Atrazine and glyphosate are not far behind Enlist Duo when it comes to the ESA. “If we can't somehow implement sound science in a different strategy into this decision making, many of our farmers may potentially not be able to use those products,” he said.

To address the ESA concerns, a collaborative pilot project is underway in Georgia, he said, and it will start with Enlist Duo with atrazine and glyphosate, again, not far behind. The collaboration is a science-backed educational effort including UGA Extension, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services, EPA, the Georgia Department of Agriculture, farmers, important industry groups and manufacturers.

From the collaboration, he hopes practical herbicide use rates and patterns can be established, along with label reform, which is needed from manufactures.

“We're the ones that need to be involved and help come up with the ways to protect these endangered species, to develop the best, most sustainable system for the farmer and the endangered species. If we're not careful, the true endangered species is going to be the farmer,” he said.