Court Orders Trump Administration To Address Pesticide Risks To Endangered Species

A U.S. federal judge recently ordered the Trump administration’s Fish and Wildlife Service to complete assessments on the impacts of six pesticides and the steps needed to protect endangered species from them.

This isn’t the first time pesticide safety has come before the Trump administration. In 2017, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) conducted an analysis revealing that two pesticides — malathion and chlorpyrifos — were so toxic they posed an existential threat to more than 1,200 endangered animal and plant species, according to an investigation by The New York Times.

However, just before the report’s release, political appointees in the Department of the Interior, which oversees the FWS, blocked its publication and initiated a new process designed to apply a much narrower standard that could downplay the hazards of the pesticides, the Times investigation noted.

Assessments by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2017 and 2021 found each of the six pesticides in question pose significant harm to many of the roughly 1,800 plant and animal species protected by the Endangered Species Act (ESA). According to a press release from the Center for Biological Diversity, an NGO, chlorpyrifos is likely to harm 97% of endangered species, diazinon 78%, carbaryl 91%, atrazine 56% and simazine 55% and methomyl 61%.