Endangered Species Act and Pesticides: How will pesticide labels change to protect endangered species?

Wednesday, March 20 at 11 a.m – Webinar

Enacted in 1973, the Endangered Species Act (ESA) requires all federal agencies to consider the impact to threatened and endangered species and their critical habitat when making decisions. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has faced numerous lawsuits for its failure to consider the Act when issuing pesticide registrations—resulting in a 2023 commitment from the Agency’s Office of Pesticide Programs that puts the ESA at the forefront of all future registrations and some registration renewals.

The NYS IPM program at Cornell will be hosting Dr. Bill Chism, Chair of the Endangered Species Act Committee for the Weed Science Society of America (WSSA), to give a webinar on March 20th (at 11 a.m.) with the following objectives:

• • Inform us about the history of Endangered Species Act (ESA),
• Discuss the requirements of all Federal agencies to comply with the ESA,
• Describe the EPA’s current workplan (including the proposed Herbicide Strategy) to meet their statutory obligations,
• Explains what this might mean for future pesticide labeling efforts.

Registration: Endangered Species Act and Pesticides: An Example | CALS (cornell.edu)

About the Speaker

Bill Chism is the chair of the Endangered Species Act Committee of the Weed Science Society of America (WSSA). He retired after more than two decades with the EPA, where he conducted assessments on the benefits of pesticides to farmers as part of the registration review process. Bill grew up working on a vegetable farm in the Salinas Valley of California. He worked in extension researching weed control research on vegetable crops before earning his PhD in Weed Science from Virginia Tech and spent 10 years working for a pesticide registrant.