8.4 Pollinators, Wildlife, Endangered Species, and Sensitive Crops

8.4 Pollinators, Wildlife, Endangered Species, and Sensitive Crops

Quick Answer: Treat bees, fish, birds, listed species, and sensitive crops as part of the label. If the label says not to apply while bees are foraging, blooming weeds count. When the label points to EPA Bulletins Live! Two, pull the bulletin for that county area, product, and month. Check ODAFF's Sensitive Crop Viewer and Endangered Species Program tools before you spray near pecans, grapes, organic ground, nurseries, cotton-pasture edges, or apiaries.

Pollinators and blooming weeds

Honey bees, native bees, and other pollinators forage on crop bloom and on weeds in bloom in the field, ditch, and field border. Many insecticide labels, and some other pesticide labels, say do not apply while bees are foraging, or they restrict application until bloom is complete, or they require applications at times of day when bees are less active. Those sentences are directions, not slogans.

The exam trap is the clean-looking wheat, pasture, or turf field whose clover, mustard, or other weeds are in bloom. Bees do not need the crop to be a pollinated fruit crop. If the label forbids application during bee foraging, blooming weeds in the target area still close the job. Mow or otherwise remove that forage only if doing so is legal, practical, and still leaves you inside the label; do not invent a "weeds do not count" exception.

Oklahoma apiaries sit in pecan bottoms, along river corridors, next to urban gardens, and on the edge of canola, alfalfa, and wildflower pasture. ODAFF offers voluntary or migratory beekeeper registration and hosts pollinator-protection materials. Hive locations may also appear in the Sensitive Crop Viewer when a beekeeper registers them. Registration is a communication tool, not a license for you to ignore a bee statement on a field with no pin on the map. Unregistered hives still exist. Look for boxes, ask the landowner, and treat blooming forage as bee habitat.

If people keep bees next to urban turf, a Saturday insecticide on blooming dandelions is a pollinator application whether or not the lawn looks "just grass." Choose a product and timing the label allows, or wait.

Birds, fish, and wildlife watering

Environmental Hazards statements often say the product is toxic to fish, toxic to aquatic invertebrates, or toxic to birds. Granules and treated seed can be especially attractive to birds. Spray and rinsate can kill fish in a stock pond at rates that looked minor in a 1,000-gallon tank.

Oklahoma wildlife watering is not abstract. Deer, birds, and livestock use farm ponds. Playas in the west are concentrated water in a dry landscape. The Red River and its oxbows hold fish. Do not apply a non-aquatic product to water, to the pond edge when water is present, or in a way that drift or runoff will unload into that water. Do not leave opened seed or granules where birds can feed. Do not rinse at the pond because "that is where the water is." Section 8.2's anti-siphon and rinsate rules are wildlife rules too.

If the product is labeled for aquatic use, you still follow that aquatic label, including any limits on treating the entire water body, swimming, or livestock watering. Aquatic labeling is a different permission, not a general license to treat every pond on the place.

Endangered Species Act and Bulletins Live! Two

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) requires federal agencies, including EPA, to ensure that pesticide registrations do not jeopardize listed species or adversely modify designated critical habitat. When geographically specific limits are needed, EPA puts them in Endangered Species Protection Bulletins delivered through Bulletins Live! Two (BLT).

When the pesticide label directs you to BLT, you must follow both the label and the bulletin for your intended application area, product, and application month. EPA states that bulletins are enforceable as an extension of the label. You may pull a bulletin and find no extra geographic limits for that product in that place and month. That does not mean you skipped a required check. It means you documented that BLT had no additional limitation.

Practical BLT habits:

• Search with the EPA registration number on the label, not a distributor code or extra suffix the BLT tool does not use.
• Zoom to the actual field or site, not just "Oklahoma."
• Match the application month.
• EPA currently describes a six-month window to obtain a bulletin before you apply (for example, obtain it anytime from January 1 through July 1 if you will apply on July 1). Check again if the job slips, because EPA continues to add limitations as consultations finish.
• Keep a copy or record that you checked, with date, product, and location.

ODAFF Endangered Species Program

The Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry (ODAFF) Endangered Species Program (ESP) exists to work with EPA on FIFRA responsibilities and ESA compliance without placing unnecessary burden on agriculture and other pesticide users. ODAFF states that pesticide products EPA determines may affect a listed species that occurs in Oklahoma, or its designated critical habitat, may be subject to the ESP. The pesticides page at ag.ok.gov/pesticides/ points applicators to ESP materials, EPA Bulletins Live, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Use ESP as the state companion, not a substitute. The label still sends you to BLT when it does. ESP helps you understand that listed-species limits are real in Oklahoma and that the state lead agency expects you to use the federal bulletin system rather than guess.

Sensitive Crop Viewer, registries, and specialty sites

Before you treat near specialty crops, grapes, organic ground, nurseries, vegetables, pecans, or other susceptible plantings, open ODAFF's Sensitive Crop Viewer. ODAFF also hosts an Environmentally Sensitive Area Registry. Both tools, plus the registry and viewer how-to guides, are linked from ag.ok.gov/pesticides/. Growers and beekeepers register sites; applicators look them up, filter by crop type or county, and print or save the map for the job.

OSU pesticide safety education tells applicators to check the viewer, take measures that may include delaying the application, and stay aware of surrounding areas. The viewer is not a complete census of every garden in Tulsa County. It is the official Oklahoma map of registered sensitive sites. Combine it with your own windshield survey: a pecan orchard, a grape trellis, a greenhouse range, a certified organic field, or a backyard garden next to commercial turf can be injured even if no pin appears.

Southwest cotton next to pasture is a two-way sensitive-crop problem. Pasture auxins can wreck cotton; some cotton herbicides and harvest aids can wreck grapes, gardens, or trees. Urban turf next to gardens is the same pattern at lot-line scale. Chapter 3 covers southwest Oklahoma restricted-area herbicide notification duties. Here, the duty is to see the neighbor's crop, hive, pond, and listed-species bulletin before the boom switches on.

Non-target protection is the last 40 CFR 171.103(c)(3) skill in this chapter: weather, soil, drainage, and the actual presence of fish, wildlife, bees, listed species, and somebody else's crop. The Core exam will not grade your sympathy. It will grade whether you stopped for bees on blooming weeds, kept product out of a wildlife pond, pulled BLT when the label sent you there, and checked Oklahoma's sensitive-crop map before you treated the fence line.