A federal court in Portland, Oregon has found the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service violated environmental laws by failing to consider alternative pest management methods when spraying for crickets and grasshoppers.
The suit has implications for New Mexico, where plans to spray a toxic and common insecticide in the Rio Chama were halted last year.
Environmentalists across the country praised the ruling.
“They will need to up their game as far as site-specific analysis, which really means that they need to pay attention to the information that stakeholders are providing,” said Sharon Selvaggio, a pesticide program specialist with one of the plaintiffs in the suit – the Xerces Society.
The APHIS rangeland grasshopper and Mormon cricket suppression program manages populations in 17 different Western states. The lawsuit found current program practices violated the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
According to the lawsuit, APHIS typically resorted to spraying toxic chemicals first, rather than other preventative measures when handling unexpected booms in cricket populations.
“The court found this unlawful and is telling APHIS to go back to the drawing board to use other methods too, so that it can minimize environmental and health risks,” Selvaggio said.
In fact, APHIS' own nationally encompassing environmental impact statement for the program admits that the best grasshopper management techniques are “preventative in nature,” but do not address short-term outbreaks.
Selvaggio said this means a complete overhaul of how APHIS approaches insecticide sprayings in the future. That, and local environmental assessments of spray areas will need to be revisited.
Here in New Mexico, plans to spray the Rio Chama watershed with a toxic insecticide were met with an outpouring of concern by several nearby communities – including tribes, recreationalists, and environmentalists.
Stakeholder engagement and consultation was mostly absent, and many pointed out that the aerial spray was indiscriminate, and could kill other important pollinator insect species like the Monarch butterfly and the Western bumblebee.
Eventually, APHIS decided to ultimately cancel the spray just days before it was scheduled to dump 670 gallons of the insecticide carbaryl over and near the watershed.
Lawyers are expected to meet in the next 30 days to hash out potential remedies. Then, the public will be asked to weigh in.
