Navigating the EPA’s Endangered Species Act (Part 2)

By Dusty Sonnenberg, CCA, Field Leader, a project of the Ohio Soybean Council and Soybean Check-off

The Endangered Species Act (EAS) was enacted in 1973. In 2025 the impact on farmers could be significant. Megan Dwyer is the Illinois Corn Growers Association’s Director of Conservation and Nutrient Stewardship. Dwyer is also a farmer and certified crop advisor. In her role, she represents Illinois corn farmers in many aspects related to conservation practice adoption, the Endangered Species Act, 45Z tax guidance, nutrient management, and more. Dwyer said, “There are things that you can be doing now, going into the spring season and beyond, to set yourselves up for success in the future.”

The EPA has established an interactive website to allow farmers to plan applications and understand the ESA requirements when those applications are made. “So you’re going to go to the Bulletins Live! Two website, (https://www.epa.gov/endangered-species/bulletins-live-two-view-bulletins), you’re going to punch in the general location of where the field is and the application month. Right now it does go out seven months, and I would recommend doing this sooner rather than later,” said Dwyer.  “You will select for the product and for that date, the big thing here when you’re selecting your product is you do have to have the EPA registration number. Unfortunately, you can’t type in a trade name active ingredient. You do have to have the actual number. Make sure you’ve got that handy before you go to the website.”

Once you have entered your selection, the site will then generate a map that provides the Pesticide Use Limitation Areas (PULAs) associated with the product(s) you selected, and it will be displayed on the map. “They are all associated with an aerial spray application for the listed products you selected,” said Dwyer. “It will then provide exactly what are those limitations and additional parameters are for that product for that time frame.”

If there are no limitations in the map area for the selected application date and product, a “Printable Bulletin” button will appear in the top right corner of the map pane. You can click this button to generate a printable bulletin in PDF format which you can print or save.

If a PULA that matches your search criteria does overlap your intended application area, click on the PULA polygon on the map to select it and activate the Limitations pane with the associated limitations. A yellow border surrounding the PULA indicates that it has been selected. Click on the “Printable Bulletin” button on the results pane to generate a printable bulletin in PDF format which you can print or save.

“That is going to be step one,” said Dwyer. You are going to have your list of products an log-on to see if there are any restrictions associated with the products in that time period and look at what those restrictions are.”

“We then start thinking about what comes next with the mitigations,” said Dwyer. “The mitigations really fall into two buckets. You have your runoff and erosion bucket and then your spray drift bucket.”

There is a map that can be obtained online for runoff vulnerability. “This is something in a lot of cases, you will be awarded mitigation points. Depending on which county you are in, you can go online and find this map. It is in an Excel spreadsheet so you can sort by state and counties to find an idea if you’re in a low, medium, high or very low run on vulnerability area. As an example, in Illinois, 91 of our 102 counties are actually in that lower vulnerability area, so we are equated 2 points automatically.”

“Some other mitigation examples that are on the list would be, if you’re in a relatively flat field, depending on your tillage type, if you’re implementing things like cover crops, if you are farming dry land, non-irrigated,” said Dwyer. “There are points depending on your management of things like tile drainage.

Spray drift is the other bucket of mitigations.  “When we think about buffers, it is going to change depending on if the product is ground applied or an aerial application,” said Dwyer.

There is still a question about some of the record keeping. There is currently nothing that requires you to keep a record of your mitigation points. “I would strongly recommend that you keep records,” sad Dwyer. “Where we are going to see the challenge come in is when there there’s a question raised, and if there is a concern about a discrepancy on if you had enough points to make an application. This is going to be a great place to start by saying, I printed off my “Bulletins Live! Two” and I have a copy of my point sheet that I filled out and have that initial base record to back up what I am doing.”