Excerpt from this press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:
The Xerces Society and Center for Biological Diversity sued the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service today over its program allowing insecticide spraying on millions of acres in 17 western states.
APHIS, a highly secretive agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture, oversees and funds the application of multiple pesticides on rangelands to prevent native grasshoppers and Mormon crickets from competing with livestock for forage.
Federal regulators have failed to properly assess the broad environmental impacts of the spraying, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act, according to the conservation groups.
The lawsuit focuses on the harm from the insecticide spray program in Montana, Wyoming, Oregon and Idaho — states that have experienced heavy spraying under the program.
In 2021 APHIS released bids for contracts to aerially spray areas measuring more than 2.6 million acres just in Montana, with one spray block measuring nearly a million acres. In recent years, pesticide spraying has occurred within national wildlife refuges, popular public recreation areas, endangered species habitats and adjacent to wilderness areas.
“Over 80% of animals in rangelands are insects and they are the backbone of ecosystems; providing pollination, food for birds such as sage grouse and helping clean up waste from animals,” said Scott Black, executive director at the Xerces Society. “These broad-scale pesticide applications could have major negative impacts not only on the grasshoppers that are targeted but on wildlife broadly."
Insects contribute services valued at more than $70 billion per year to the U.S. economy, according to a recent study. People and wildlife depend on insect pollination for fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. Most birds, freshwater fish and mammals consume insects as food.
Greater sage grouse, monarch butterflies, western bumblebees and a wide variety of other species that inhabit western grasslands are already in steep decline and are extremely vulnerable to further harm from APHIS’s insecticide-spraying program.
