Draft Strategy to Protect Endangered Species from Fungicides

The draft Fungicide Strategy is part of EPA’s ongoing efforts to develop a more efficient, effective and protective multichemical, multispecies approach to meeting its obligations under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). EPA focused the draft Strategy on conventional fungicides used in agriculture in the lower 48 states, where approximately 41 million agricultural acres are treated with fungicides each year. The draft identifies protections earlier in the pesticide review process, thus creating a far more efficient approach to evaluate and protect the FWS-listed species that live near these millions of acres of agricultural areas.  

The draft Fungicide Strategy is intended to create a transparent, clear, understandable, predictable, and reasonable approach to assess possible population-level impacts to listed species and identify mitigation to reduce the potential impacts from the use of agricultural fungicides. Consistent with the preceding Herbicide and Insecticide Strategies, the Fungicide Strategy provides a framework to evaluate potential impacts to populations of listed species most impacted by fungicides and identify mitigation, thereby accelerating EPA’s ability to meet its ESA obligations and reducing the legal vulnerability of EPA’s pesticide decisions. When applied to pesticide regulatory decisions, mitigation identified using the Fungicide Strategy would address potential impacts to listed animals and plants and, in doing so, would reduce population-level impacts to more than 1,000 listed species under the purview of FWS in the lower 48 states.

The draft Fungicide Strategy Framework and accompanying support documents are available in docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2026-2973 at www.regulations.gov for a 60-day public comment period.