07
Sep
Environmentalists and Beekeepers Give EPA Legal Notice to Protect Threatened and Endangered Species
(Beyond Pesticides, September 7, 2012) Yesterday, Beyond Pesticides joined with the Center for Food Safety and the Sierra Club, along with beekeepers from around the country, to file a 60-Day Notice letter with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announcing the intent to jointly sue the agency for Endangered Species Act (ESA) violations. The potential lawsuit highlights EPA’s continuing failure to ensure, through consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, that its numerous product approvals for the neonicotinoid insecticides clothianidin and thiamethoxam are not likely to jeopardize any federally-listed threatened or endangered species. 
“EPA has failed to uphold the clear standards of the Endangered Species Act,” said Peter Jenkins, attorney at the Center for Food Safety. “By continuing to ignore the growing number of reports and studies demonstrating the risks of neonicotinoids to honey bees and a large number of already threatened and endangered species, the EPA is exposing these already compromised populations to potentially irreversible harm.”
The Notice of Intent to Sue follows a legal petition previously filed by several environmental organizations and more than two dozen beekeepers requesting that EPA immediately suspend use of the chemical clothianidin that poses fatal harm to pollinators. While refusing to issue an immediate suspension, the EPA agreed to open a public comment docket to review additional points raised in the legal petition.
“EPA’s failure to follow the law potentially poses a direct, long-term threat to the sustainability of fragile ecosystems,” said Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides. “Given the known hazards of clothianidin and all neonicotinoid pesticides, EPA’s lack of respect for known scientific evidence and existing regulations endangers environments essential to our well-being.”
In the nine years since the EPA conditionally registered clothianidin for use on corn and canola, the agency has admitted to both the hazards of the insecticide and the need for compliance with ESA.
The EPA fact sheet on clothianidin reads as follows: “Clothianidin is expected to present acute and/or chronic toxicity risk to endangered/threatened birds and mammals via possible ingestion of treated corn and canola seeds. Endangered/threatened non-target insects may be impacted via residue laden pollen and nectar. The potential use sites cover the entire U.S. because corn is grown in almost all U.S. states.”
The agency has also made the same admission regarding thiamethoxam.
Despite EPA’s recognition of the acute and chronic toxicity risks to endangered and threatened birds, mammals and insects from these chemicals nearly a decade ago, the agency has continued to ignore concerns surrounding the effects on these critical species. Over the past 12 years, EPA has approved a total of 86 products containing clothianidin and thiamethoxam, and it permits the use of these insecticides on more than 30 crops, as well as ornamental, turfgrass and structural applications.
“The disconnect at EPA between the serious risks these toxic chemicals pose to pollinators and the approval of the products that contain them is inexcusable,” said Laurel Hopwood, Sierra Club’s Genetic Engineering Action Team chairwoman. “One-third of our food supply relies on the presence of pollinators. EPA should be protecting, not imperiling them.”
The 60-Day Notice cites several violations of the ESA, all of which address EPA actions that have enabled clothianidin and thiamethoxam to be applied over a vast amount of U.S. farmland and in, or near, a wide range of critical habitats and ecosystems. If the ESA violations are not resolved within 60 days, the letter signers may then sue EPA.
TAKE ACTION: We only have until September 25th to tell EPA to suspend clothianidin. Submit your comments, identified by Docket ID number EPA-HQ-OPP-2012-0334-0015 at www.regulations.gov, or by clicking on this link. Follow the online instructions for submitting comments (please note that only the fields with asterisks are required).
For more information on how pesticides affect pollinators and what you can do to help, see Beyond Pesticides’ Pollinator Program page.
To view the press release for this announcement, see here.
All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.
We need to protect endangered species! Not kill them!!
September 7th, 2012 at 12:49 pmIf what is reported here is accurate, every management level and above employee should be fired forthwith. It is those levels that are influenced (bought off) by the chemical companies.. These insecticides have been banned in Europe for over 5 years. Dammit, if you can’t do your job without succumbing to bribery, then step aside and get someone in there that can.
September 7th, 2012 at 7:42 pmPlease protect the pollinators.
For many plants to make the fruits and seeds we eat, they must be pollinated. Some pollen can be spread by the wind, but many plants require insect pollinators, such as bees, to do this for them.
Without bees and other pollinators, these plants cannot make the food we eat and the seeds we need to grow more plants.
Eventually, there could be no food plants to put pesticides on, and therefore, no food.
Please protect the balance of nature and protect the pollinators!
September 7th, 2012 at 8:08 pmPlease save the Bees!!!! Too many people are trying to buy organic honey. Bees will disappear for any honey if you keep spraying poisons on them.
September 17th, 2012 at 6:24 pm