SOURCE: Center for Biological Diversity
DATE: March 20, 2020
SNIP: The Trump administration has proposed to approve genetically engineered crops on national wildlife refuges throughout the southeastern United States, a step likely to increase use of glyphosate and other pesticides known to harm wildlife.
The Obama administration acted in 2014 to phase out GE crops on all national wildlife refuges following a successful decade-long campaign by the Center for Food Safety and others. The Trump administration reversed that decision in 2018, prompting a lawsuit from the Center for Biological Diversity and Center for Food Safety challenging the action in September 2019.
The proposal released this week opens the door to escalating uses of GE crops and harmful pesticides across the Southeastern Region of the refuge system, which includes 131 refuges in 10 states, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
“Only the Trump administration would aggressively promote the use of crops genetically engineered for pesticide tolerance on wildlife refuges,” said Hannah Connor, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s a no-brainer that this kind of pesticide-intensive agriculture shouldn’t be allowed on public lands that are critical to wildlife conservation and preservation of the unique ecosystems of the southeastern U.S.”
National wildlife refuges are federal public lands specifically designated to protect fish and wildlife. The Southeastern Region is comprised of almost 4 million acres of refuge lands and waters that provide vital habitat for dozens of endangered species known to be imperiled by pesticide use — including bats, birds, freshwater mussels, and fish like the pallid sturgeon and Alabama cavefish.
Genetically engineered corn and soy are typically designed to survive what would normally be fatal spraying with herbicides like glyphosate, dicamba and 2-4,D. This allows farmers to use these pesticides prophylactically, especially in the summer months after the crops have emerged. Increased pesticide-use periods often correspond with key wildlife feeding and breeding times, when pesticides can be especially harmful to species.
Glyphosate use on GE crops may have significantly contributed to monarch butterflies’ 80% decline over the past two decades. This is because the pesticide is a uniquely potent killer of milkweed, the monarch caterpillar’s only food. Recent estimates indicate that monarch populations have further plunged by over half in the past year alone.