On April 29, 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) released the final version of its Insecticide Strategy, which the agency released in a draft form in July 2024. The final Insecticide Strategy is the most recent component of EPA’s effort to revise how the agency meets its Endangered Species Act (“ESA”) responsibilities while taking actions under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (“FIFRA”). Like the final Herbicide Strategy that EPA released last September, the final Insecticide Strategy works to reduce pesticide exposure to protected wildlife by implementing mitigation measures to curb pesticide spray drift and runoff. The Insecticide Strategy is not self-implementing. Mitigation measures identified in the Strategy will begin appearing on pesticide labels as new pesticide products are approved and as existing products come up for registration review. While full implementation is still years away, with the Insecticide Strategy now finalized, farmers and pesticide applicators can expect to begin seeing mitigations appear on insecticide labels in the near future.
Background
EPA first announced its new policy to address pesticide exposure to species protected under the ESA in April 2022. That month, EPA published a work plan titled Balancing Wildlife Protection and Responsible Pesticide Use: How EPA’s Pesticide Program Will Meet its Endangered Species Act Obligations which, along with an update released the following November, outlined EPA’s plan to create different strategy documents to address herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and rodenticides respectively. According to EPA, the new policy approach was necessary to address what the agency has described as a “decades-old challenge” to satisfy the agency’s obligations under both the ESA and FIFRA.
The ESA is the primary federal wildlife protection law in the United States, while FIFRA serves as the nation’s primary federal statute regulating pesticide use. Under the ESA, all federal agencies, including EPA, are required to consult with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) to ensure that the actions that federal agencies fund, authorize, or carry out will not “jeopardize” the continued existence of species protected under the ESA. 16 U.S.C. § 1536(a)(2). Every year EPA takes numerous actions under FIFRA including but not limited to registering a new pesticide product, conducting registration review of an existing product, and authorizing new uses of registered pesticide products. Since the ESA was enacted in 1973, EPA has struggled to fully satisfy its consultation responsibilities when carrying out FIFRA actions. As a result, the agency has faced numerous lawsuits filed primarily by environmental groups seeking to compel EPA to complete ESA consultation on FIFRA actions. Due to how strictly courts tend to interpret the ESA’s consultation requirements, most of these lawsuits have resulted in either a court order directing EPA to complete the consultation process, or a settlement agreement where EPA agrees to complete consultation. Currently, EPA believes it will take into the 2030s to complete all the FIFRA-related ESA consultations that are under a court order or settlement agreement.
In an effort to better protect endangered wildlife from pesticide exposure and to create pesticide labels that are less likely to be challenged in court, EPA began a new approach to satisfying its ESA responsibilities when taking action under FIFRA. Under this new approach, EPA has sorted all registered pesticides into broad groups, and for each group developed mitigation measures designed to reduce pesticide exposure to protected species that occurs via pesticide spray drift and runoff or erosion. In 2024, EPA issued the final version of its Herbicide Strategy which identifies spray drift and runoff mitigations that the agency expects to include on herbicide labels. More information on that effort is available here. Also in 2024, EPA issued its draft Insecticide Strategy, outlining the various mitigation measures the agency was considering for insecticides. Following a 60-day public comment period that ran from July to September, EPA has officially released the final Insecticide Strategy
Final Insecticide Strategy
Similar to both the draft Insecticide Strategy and the final Herbicide Strategy, the final Insecticide Strategy outlines various mitigation measures designed to reduce pesticide exposure to listed species by limiting pesticide spray drift and runoff/erosion. While the Herbicide Strategy focuses specifically on protecting plant species listed under the ESA, the Insecticide Strategy focuses on limiting pesticide exposure to protected invertebrate species.
As in the draft Insecticide Strategy, more information on which is available here, the final Insecticide Strategy lays out a three-step framework that EPA will use to determine what additional mitigation measures to include on an insecticide label. Under step 1, EPA will establish the likelihood that a particular insecticide will have population-level impacts to protected wildlife species as either “not likely,” “low,” “medium,” or “high.” If EPA determines that the insecticide will have low, medium, or high population-level impacts to a protected species, then the agency will assign some amount of additional mitigation. In general, mitigation will be lower when the potential for population-level impacts is lower and higher when the potential is higher.
During step 2 of the process, EPA will determine which mitigation measures to apply. To reduce spray drift, the Insecticide Strategy relies on buffer zones and application equipment with the size of the buffer zone depending on the insecticide’s expected population-level impacts and the method of application. The largest buffer zone identified in the Strategy is a 300 foot buffer for aerial applications. All other buffer zones are identified as 100 feet or less. Additionally, the Insecticide Strategy outlines mitigation measures that farmers or pesticide applicators could use to reduce the distance of a required spray buffer such as the use of specific application equipment, the width of the area to which the insecticide is being applied, the use of a hedgerow or wooded area as a physical barrier and the relative humidity.
To reduce insecticide runoff and erosion, the Insecticide Strategy employes a menu of mitigation measures. The menu, available on EPA’s website, outlines a variety of different mitigation options for farmers and applicators to choose from. The mitigations fall into a handful of different categories including: application parameters such as reducing the application rate or conducting a partial field treatment; field characteristics such as fields with a low slope or with permeable soils; in-field mitigation measures such as the management of irrigation water or planting of cover crops; adjacent to the field measures such as the use of a grassed waterway or vegetative field strip; systems that capture runoff and discharge; and then a final miscellaneous category. Each mitigation measure is assigned a point value from 1 to 3 with high efficacy mitigations receiving 3 points, medium efficacy mitigations receiving 2 points and low efficacy mitigations receiving 1 point. Based on the degree of population-level impacts EPA identified during step 1 of the Insecticide Strategy framework, the agency will identify the number of runoff/erosion mitigation points needed to apply a particular insecticide. Insecticides identified as having a low population-level impact will need 3 points, insecticides with a medium impact will need 6 points and insecticides with a high impact will need 9 points. In other words, in order for a pesticide applicator to apply an insecticide that EPA has determined will have a high population-level impact on protected species, the applicator will need to achieve 9 runoff/erosion points prior to application.
As it did in the final Herbicide Strategy, in the final Insecticide Strategy, EPA has assigned counties throughout the country different mitigation points based on how prone the fields in each county are to runoff. Counties with medium runoff potential will receive 2 mitigation points, counties with low runoff potential will receive 3 mitigation points and counties with very low runoff potential will receive 6 mitigation points. An applicator in a county with very low runoff potential applying an insecticide that requires 9 mitigation points will only need to achieve 3 extra mitigation points, while an applicator in a county with a low runoff potential applying the same insecticide would need to achieve 7 extra points.
In response to comments it received on the draft Insecticide Strategy, EPA has confirmed in the final Insecticide Strategy that it is working towards certifying voluntary conservation programs the participation in which would automatically count as 9 mitigation points. Currently, only the United States Department of Agriculture’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program when it includes the National Resources Conservation Service’s Conservation Program Standard 595 Pest Management Conservation System for planning runoff/erosion mitigation for agriculture has been certified for 9 mitigation points, but EPA is in the process of reviewing other programs. Additionally, EPA will grant mitigation points to farmers and applicators who do not participate in a conservation program but use a qualified technical expert to plan insecticide applications.
Finally, during step 3 of the Insecticide Framework, EPA will determine where in the contiguous United States the spray drift and runoff/erosion mitigations will be required. Mitigation measures that are considered necessary across the entire contiguous United States will be included on an insecticide’s general label. Those mitigation measures that are only required in certain geographic areas known as Pesticide Use Limitation Areas (“PULAs”) will be posted as bulletins on EPA’s website Bulletins Live! Two. The insecticide’s label will instruct users to check Bulletins Live! Two prior to making an application to determine if there are any relevant PULAs the applicator needs to comply with.
While most of the mitigation measures identified in the Insecticide Strategy are intended to reduce exposure to protected species that are not located on agricultural fields. However, EPA has identified 4 protected species that can be found on agricultural fields and would require additional in-field mitigation measures. Those species include the Karner blue butterfly, Mitchell’s satyr butterfly, Fender’s blue butterfly, and the Dakota skipper butterfly. EPA notes that mitigation measures for those species would be both geographically limited and limited to certain times of the year. Any on-field mitigations would be required through PULAs on Bulletins Live! Two.
Going Forward
EPA will begin implementing the Insecticide Strategy as it registers new insecticide products for use and conducts registration review of existing insecticides. While it is unclear how many insecticides could be impacted this year, when the Herbicide Strategy was finalized in 2024, only a handful of herbicides were expected to have mitigation measures added to their labels in 2025. Although the Insecticide Strategy will not be automatically applied to all insecticide labels overnight, farmers and pesticide applicators should pay attention to future label changes.
Despite being dubbed the “final” Insecticide Strategy, EPA notes that it will continue to seek engagement on and develop certain aspects of the Strategy such as identifying additional conservation programs that would count as 9 mitigation points and further refining species maps to create more accurate PULAs. Overall, EPA believes that implementing the Insecticide Strategy will result in both more efficient ESA consultations with FWS and insecticide labels better equipped to withstand judicial review.
To view the final Insecticide Strategy, click here.
To view the text of the ESA, click here.
To view the text of FIFRA, click here.
For more resources on pesticides from the National Agricultural Law Center, click here.