On May 1, 2026, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it released the draft Fungicide Strategy (Strategy) as part of EPA’s obligations under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). According to EPA, the draft Strategy identifies “practical, science-based” protections to safeguard more than 1,000 federally endangered and threatened species, while preserving flexibility for states, growers, and applicators using fungicide products.
EPA is opening a 60-day public comment period. Comments are due on or before June 29, 2026, and can be submitted to docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2026-2973 at www.regulations.gov. EPA states it seeks comment from farmers, applicators, scientists, conservation groups, state partners, Tribal partners, and members of the public before issuing the draft Strategy in final. EPA expects to issue the final Fungicide Strategy no later than November 2026.
EPA will also host a public webinar on May 20, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. (EDT) to provide an overview of the draft Strategy, discuss how it will be implemented through registration and registration review, and answer any questions from the public. Additional information on the webinar is available here.
The draft Strategy outlines the following actions:
- Uses a three-step framework to (1) identify potential population-level impacts to listed species; (2) identify mitigation measures; and (3) determine where those mitigations should apply.
- Informs EPA’s registration and registration review decisions for conventional agricultural fungicides in the lower 48 states, where approximately 41 million acres are treated annually.
- Considers where listed species live, what they need (such as food sources or pollinators), where fungicides may move in the environment, and potential effects on non-target species.
- Guides mitigations that EPA will propose in future regulatory actions, with public input on each action before any decision is issued in final. The draft Strategy itself does not impose requirements.
- Provides flexibilities to states and growers and emphasizes ongoing collaboration with federal, state, and Tribal partners to deliver effective, tailored protections.
- Updates options for reducing spray drift buffer distances, including expanding spray drift adjuvants as a mitigation option to insecticides and fungicides and adding guar gum as an additional adjuvant type.
Commentary
This latest “strategy” for implementing ESA restrictions on pesticide decisions continues the similar approach for ESA implementation as the previously issued strategies for herbicides and insecticides — the latter notably issued after a new Administration arrived in January 2025. EPA’s announced approach here maintains the same outline as those for herbicides and insecticides. That includes that after using established ecological assessment methods, EPA will require a certain number of “mitigation points” dependent on the review of ecological risks to species and their habitats as part of the risk assessment.
The scheme is designed to prevent off-site migration through the air or soil, or as EPA has called it, “avoidance and minimization” of off-site movement toward habitats of threatened and endangered species. These strategy documents follow the outline of how EPA planned to protect species first announced in 2022, adding much more detail about how EPA will implement the avoidance and minimization approach and incorporating comments received on the past “strategies” and more specific program elements along the way.
Since the release of the ESA Insecticide Strategy, EPA has devoted much effort on further development of training and outreach materials and plans to communicate to growers what the program (for all pesticides) will require. In 2025, EPA released a Pesticide App for Label Mitigations (PALM) as a “mobile-friendly tool to serve as a one-stop shop that helps farmers and applicators use EPA’s mitigation menu…”
Pesticide companies and suppliers are also developing compliance assistance materials; notably in 2025, pesticide registrants, distributors, and retailers released instructional videos to facilitate understanding and compliance with EPA’s ESA requirements. These short videos provide an overview of the EPA ESA program, including an overview of the EPA approach, electronic labels, and mitigation strategies (avoiding off-site drift and soil runoff).
In the end, with final risk assessments for specific pesticides and developed strategies for pesticide categories, EPA hopes to be able to show that its endangered species program can both protect threatened and endangered species and maintain sufficient crop protection techniques and tools for American agricultural producers. It is not clear at this point how disruptive implementing the ESA program might be for past production practices, and any additional costs would come at a bad economic time for farmers given tariff impacts and other factors increasing input costs. As new product and registration review assessments are completed, compliance outreach by EPA, development of enforcement policies by EPA and state partners, and industry assistance to customers will help meet the long-awaited goal of successfully integrating ESA and FIFRA requirements for pesticide use.
