A U.S. District Court judge in Portland has ruled federal regulators violated environmental law for failing to consider other pest management methods before spraying millions of acres of public rangelands in Oregon and other western states to manage grasshopper outbreaks.
In its early August decision, the U.S District Court for the District of Oregon ruled the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service — an office within the U.S. Department of Agriculture — violated the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act by spraying pesticides first, before considering other options.
Grasshoppers and Mormon crickets are natural components of the rangeland ecosystem. However, when their populations reach outbreak levels, they can result in crop and economic losses for farmers and ranchers.
Lance Cheung / U.S. Department of Agriculture
The lawsuit was filed by environmental groups the Center for Biological Diversity and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in 2022. For years, those groups have argued the agency has continually harmed a variety of insects and animals in public western rangelands.
“For decades the Department of Agriculture has acted with impunity, drenching millions of acres of western ecosystems with deadly insecticides to kill the native grasshoppers and crickets that have always been keystone species here,” said Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement.
Several grasshopper and cricket species, like the Mormon cricket — actually a type of katydid — native to Oregon and much of the Western United States.
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Multiple years of hot weather and low rainfall can create the ideal conditions for the population of the insects to explode. In 2021, Oregon suffered one of the worst outbreaks in 50 years, with a record 10 million acres of affected rangelands — which resulted in insects munching away at grazing grounds cattle and other wildlife depend on.
One way to manage the outbreaks is to spray the insects with chemical pesticides, like diflubenzuron or carbaryl.
Scott Black, the executive director of the Portland-based Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, said that’s not a long-term solution, and the chemicals do more than just kill grasshoppers.
“They kill pretty much all insects that are out there,” he said. “If you care about bees, if you care about pollinators, if you care about monarch butterflies and, actually, if you care about birds and fish, you really need to be thinking that we need to move away from this really blunt approach of these large-scale sprays to try to do this in a more holistic manner.”
A grasshopper in dry dirt near Vale, Ore., July 31, 2024.
Anna Lueck / OPB
Black said the lawsuit’s goal wasn’t to take pesticides off the table, but rather consider other options before resorting to spraying, such as prescribed burns or better vegetation management.
“We’re not saying that we can simply go to other methods all the time,” Black said. “But we should be looking at these other methods and trying these other methods as part of how we approach this, because it really is untenable to spray a half a million acres every year with these toxic insecticides.”
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In Oregon, Black said APHIS has sprayed areas like the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge — a crucial resting and breeding ground for several bird species and other wildlife.
In a 2023 environmental assessment, APHIS detailed it had sprayed around 114,000 acres of public rangelands in Oregon between 2014 and 2023 — mostly on the eastern side of the state. But conservation groups have long criticized the agency for flawed assessment reports and for lacking “basic details on where the sprays might occur”.
In an email to OPB, a spokesperson for APHIS said the agency is still reviewing the District Court’s decision, and declined to comment.
Related: Western drought brings another woe: voracious grasshoppers
The court ruling means APHIS will have to more closely consider the effects of spraying on insects and animals and overhaul its ”spray-first” approach to grasshopper control. Black said APHIS could decide to appeal the decision, but hopes it opens up a collaborative dialogue with federal regulators.
Oregon’s Department of Agriculture has funded grasshopper mitigation programs for years. Earlier this year, the state Legislature earmarked $1.2 million for some of the most severely affected counties to treat outbreaks — which will involve spraying. Black said it’s unlikely the federal ruling will have any effect on that program, since it’s state-funded.
