Protecting Bees from Pesticides: Why EPA Regulations Need to Change

The United States Environmental Protection Agency, also known as the EPA, is tasked with regulating pesticides to protect people and the environment from their impacts. To test these impacts, the EPA uses honey bees. This might seem reasonable, but the honey bee is not native to North America and its social colony structure is unique and not representative of the thousands of native species of bees in the United States. The reliance on the honey bee for testing has profound implications for the safety of our native bees and other pollinators, given their vastly different life histories.

Joining us to cover this topic are Aimee Code from the Xerces Society and Sharmeen Morrison from Earthjustice. Aimee is Xerces’s pesticide program director. She and her staff evaluate the risks of pesticides, develop technical guidance, and advocate for actions that reduce reliance on and risks of pesticide use in both urban and agricultural settings. Sharmeen is a senior associate attorney with Earthjustice’s Biodiversity Defense Program, which engages in national litigation to confront the major drivers of biodiversity loss. In this role, she has worked to protect manatees in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon, golden-cheeked warblers in Texas Hill Country, and insect pollinators nationwide. Together, Aimee and Sharmeen are working to change how the EPA regulates pesticides.

Thank you for listening! For more information go to xerces.org/bugbanter.

Transcript

Rachel: Welcome to Bug Banter with the Xerces Society where we explore the world of invertebrates and discover how to help these extraordinary animals. If you want to support our work go to xerces.org/give.

Rachel: Hi, I'm Rachel Dunham in Missoula, Montana.

Matthew: And I'm Matthew Shepherd in Portland, Oregon.

Rachel: The United States Environmental Protection Agency, also known as the EPA, is tasked with regulating pesticides to protect people and the environment from their impacts. To test these impacts, the EPA uses honey bees. This might seem reasonable, but the honey bee is not native to North America and its social colony structure is unique and not representative of the thousands of native species of bees in the United States. The reliance on the honey bee for testing has profound implications for the safety of our native bees and other pollinators, given their vastly different life histories. 

Rachel: Joining us to cover this topic are Aimée Code from the Xerces Society and Sharmeen Morrison from Earthjustice. Aimée is Xerces’s pesticide program director. She and her staff evaluate the risks of pesticides, develop technical guidance, and advocate for actions that reduce reliance on and risks of pesticide use in both urban and agricultural settings. Sharmeen is a senior associate attorney with Earthjustice’s Biodiversity Defense Program, which engages in national litigation to confront the major drivers of biodiversity loss. In this role, she has worked to protect manatees in Florida’s Indian River Lagoon, golden-cheeked warblers in Texas Hill Country, and insect pollinators nationwide. Together, Aimée and Sharmeen are working to change how EPA regulates pesticides. Just a small task. Haha. 

Rachel: Welcome, Aimée and Sharmeen. We're so excited to have you join us and talk about this interesting topic today. Welcome.

Sharmeen: I'm excited to be here.

Matthew: Yeah, no, really appreciate you making the time to sit down. So to start with a little background, could you tell us what the EPA is, and what its role is in regulating pesticides? And I guess that's like a two-part question, because, also, I mean, how does it do that?

Aimée: Well, as Rachel said, EPA, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, it's been around since 1970. Actually put into place under the Nixon administration. And has a really broad umbrella of work that it has to undertake, right. So it's actually charged with protecting human health, the environment—so all of our wildlife. And that means that they have an Office of Water. They have an office that works on Superfund sites. And they are the agency that decides if a pesticide can get on the market and how it can be used once it is on the market.

Aimée: So again, kind of—. The way they do that is if there is a company that wants to put a pesticide on the market, they ask the company to submit a bunch of tests. Does this chemical cause cancer? Is it an eye irritant? As Rachel mentioned, what amount does it take to kill a honey bee when it's been contacted by this chemical? So ask these questions. How long does it last? Is it likely to get into water? And then they take all that information and they say, “Is this something that can be put on the market? What kind of harm would it cause if it can be on the market? How can it be used?” And what—. So basically that's how those decisions are made. Except that the world is full of so many species. The questions that they ask are extremely narrow. And the reality of what happens once that chemical is put on the market oftentimes leads to concern.

Aimée: Something also to quickly add is when they are deciding what can go on the market, they have a threshold of risk and they are to avoid any unreasonable adverse effects. It's really vague, but it also is a line that we cannot cross. And the reason we’re here today to talk to you guys, and the reason we are working on this is because we feel like that line has been crossed. And that unreasonable effects are occurring because of the current regulatory structure is failing.

Matthew: Yeah, so what does all that mean for consumers? I mean, or deep pesticide users?

Aimée: Yeah, I mean, the reality is if you go—if you identify something in your yard and you're worried about it. Or you are on your farm, or wherever you are, and you want to manage that disease, that weed, that insect, you should not assume that a pesticide that you can buy anywhere is safe. You can know that they've tried to hit a threshold to avoid unreasonable harm. But what we're seeing on the landscape are some pretty serious declines to a number of species where pesticides are part of that. So one, you should not just assume that if you have a pest that a pesticide is going to be safe for you. And you might want to think about what other options are out there for you, right? “This might cause harm. What else can I do?” And I would contend oftentimes there are other solutions out there that are going to actually in the long term [be] more effective.

Matthew: Thank you.

Rachel: So in the intro, we didn't really allude to it, we called it out that honey bees are not kind of “normal” compared to our native bees. They're quite different. So can you explain how other pollinators are different from honey bees. And what does that mean for the impact of pesticides on our native species?

Sharmeen: Sure. So I'm going to start by explaining how EPA defends this practice of using honey bees as a surrogate, as they say, for other insects. Every other insect on the planet, in fact. And EPA offers three main defenses of that practice. None of them are valid anymore, if they ever were. But to start, EPA says it makes sense to focus on honey bees because they are the most important commercial pollinator. That may be true, but that ignores the huge ecological role played by non-honey bees and other insects. We're talking about the foundation of terrestrial food webs, all the ecosystem services that non-honey bees provide. Not to mention the law under which EPA regulates pesticides—the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, FIFRA—requires EPA to consider those ecological impacts. It's not just economic analysis, right. As Aimée mentioned, this is about unreasonable adverse effects on the environment.

Sharmeen: Also, it's worth mentioning that solitary bees and bumble bees are commercially important. There's some bee species that are better, more efficient pollinators of some crops than honey bees. And so for that reason, they're intensively managed for the pollination of those crops, you know, like squash, tomatoes, alfalfa. So we do ourselves a disservice when we undervalue the commercial importance of solitary and bumble bees.

Sharmeen: EPA also says it's not practicable to test non-honey bees because testing protocols for non-honey bees haven't been developed. But that's not true anymore. Over the years, testing guidelines for solitary bees and bumble bees have been developed. And in fact, the European Food Safety Authority already requests pesticide manufacturers in Europe use those protocols to submit data on pesticide impacts to non-honey bees. So EPA needs to catch up. 

Sharmeen: And finally, EPA says that protecting honey bees means other insects will be protected as well, which suggests that they think honey bees are at least as vulnerable to pesticides as non-honey bees and other insects. But there is now a huge body of scientific research showing that that's simply not true. Native bees, butterflies, and moths can be significantly more sensitive to pesticides than honey bees.

Sharmeen: And I think finally that's a lead into the question you asked, which is around the difference between honey bees and every other pollinator insect we are thinking about in this petition. So there are significant differences between honey bees and other pollinating insects. And those differences in life history and physiologies explain these varying susceptibilities to pesticides, and the fact that solitary bees, bumble bees, butterflies, and moths can even be significantly more vulnerable to pesticides than honey bees.

Sharmeen: So to begin, a lot of native bees are ground nesting. So they are exposed to pesticides in soil. And that's an exposure pathway that honey bees basically don't have. A lot of native bees also construct their nests using mud, so they're potentially exposed to pesticide residues in mud. Again, not an exposure pathway that honey bees have. Honey bees also have what's called organizational redundancy. Because their hives are so big the loss of a few individual workers isn't necessarily disastrous for the population as a whole, whereas solitary bees don't have that. So the loss of a few individual solitary bees could be disastrous for a population. And bumble bees have hives, but they're just not as big as honey bee hives. 

Sharmeen: And as for butterflies and moths—you know, this order Lepidoptera, which includes butterflies and moths. If honey bees are a poor surrogate for other bees, it stands to reason that honey bees are an even poorer surrogate for non-bees like butterflies and moths. So the Lepidoptera order includes species that have life stages like caterpillar, chrysalis, or cocoon. And those life stages have no true analogs in honey bee testing, so they're really not taken into consideration in EPA's pesticide risk assessment. And like the solitary and bumble bee, butterflies, and moths also have pesticide exposure pathways that honey bees don't have. For example, this mud puddling behavior where butterflies and moths like sip mineral rich water in like damp areas, and that water could have pesticides in it. That's not an exposure pathway that honey bees have. And they also, I guess, collect honeydew from plants, stems, and leaves—again, could be contaminated with pesticides—and not an exposure pathway that honey bees face. So all this means that if EPA doesn't take into account pesticide impacts to solitary bees, bumble bees, butterflies, and moths, the agency is severely underestimating the toll of pesticides on pollinator populations.

Rachel: Thank you for explaining all that. I have a couple—like two kind of clarifying follow-up questions. I'm very new to this. I think I have had some background information, but I'm making a lot of assumptions in my head. I just want to make sure that I'm grasping all of this. So, are honey bees the only insect that are tested for pesticides? And if so, are pollinators the only group of insects that the EPA is concerned about? Like, are any other insects considered?

Sharmeen: Yes and yes. Right now, honey bees are the only insect species—though only terrestrial insect species—for which EPA requires pesticide testing data. And as you point out, that's ignoring every other pollinating insect, and it's ignoring every other insect period. So there's really strong reasons that underline why EPA needs to consider way more species than just the honey bee.

Rachel: In the back of my head, I'm thinking, “What? How did I, first of all, not know this? And second of all, I guarantee the general public, most of them don't know.” They think, “Oh, these must be safe because they've been tested.” But you think about fireflies and other insects that we love and that we care about that are just completely being ignored, that we don't know if these are safe [for] and people are spraying them in their yard and their community. So yeah, thank you for clarifying that. I think it's a really important note.

Matthew: Yeah, no, it seems like the current EPA process is utterly inadequate to address what they've been tasked with. And obviously Rachel mentioned in the introduction that the two of you are collaborating on the task of trying to change how the EPA regulates pesticides, which just seems like a huge undertaking. I mean, I'm just so impressed that you're even starting on it. So thank you and congratulations. What's this process? I mean, how are you approaching this, and what kind of steps can you take to change how an agency takes on such a huge task?

Aimée: I got to say we are taking a slice out of a very huge problem that we're looking at right now. There are many ways in which we need to step back and reassess how we're using these chemicals, how we're using pesticides in the environment, in order to limit the harm that's being caused. But this one sliver is really important for our biodiversity. As we all know, because we're here at Bug Banter, is that our invertebrates are the foundation of all life, you know. Are we talking—. And we can't assume that we're above and beyond this by any means, right? I think we all, everyone who listens has probably read at least one E.O. Wilson quote. 

Aimée: This one sliver, what are we doing, right? We are looking to EPA to understand what kind of harm can be posed by these chemicals to our pollinators? What kind of risk is there? So that when they're putting a chemical on the market, they can make sure that they are not causing that unreasonable harm. Sharmeen made so many good points about like, what if you've got a squash bee? A squash bee, where the female is nesting at the base of that squash plant and the male is actually going to be sleeping overnight in a flower. What kind of harm are we going to have for that female that's digging that nest in there, when—if you've used a soil drench of a chemical, if you've used, you know, if you've used a seed treatment? And what kind of the—. The pupa and the larva that are going to be in there—what kind of chemicals are they eating when they are underground, when they're—? And so none of this is understood right now. So we're asking that we better understand that kind of a risk. Because these are critically important species out there. We have about 4,000 different species of bees and we're—. And we're not even—we're looking at one that's not even native to our area. I don't know if I answered your full question, Matthew. Tell me if I need to—.

Matthew: Yeah, no, I mean, that was great. And I have to say, if you're just taking on a slice, to me, it seems like a great big chunk, more than, way more than just a slice. I just didn't know what the steps are. I mean, how do you engage with an agency? I mean, are you just like telephoning them and saying, “Hey, hey, hey, come on, folks, we've got to change this. I mean, look.” How are you actually doing this?

Aimée: And Sharmeen will talk about this, I think, a lot better than I. But basically what we have done is we submitted a petition to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and we outlined what it is that we see as their responsibility as an agency, and what actions they can take in order to fulfill that responsibility. So we're asking that—and it's very clear and very straightforward, right?—we're asking things like: right now, you only test honey bees and you test them for a contact exposure. So oftentimes in the past, one of the main ways that pests were killed was you spray them, you'd hit it directly on their exoskeleton and they would be killed. There has been a real change in how we manage pests now and a lot more pesticides that are out there, they are put on a plant or they're in a plant because they're systemic and the pest is supposed to eat that chemical. But we don't require them to even test for an oral toxicity. So here we don't even know if that honey bee that might be eating pollen or nectar from a plant that has chemicals in that pollen and nectar—we don't know what kind of harm is being caused. So the simple things like that. We're asking that the kind of exposures that these species are going to get, we need to understand what kind of harm they're going to receive from it. 

Aimée: We're also asking that you look long term. A lot of chemicals that are on the market right now are really persistent. We're talking about these chemicals lasting in and on plants for weeks, months, sometimes years. So if we're looking at a single day of an exposure, we know nothing about what's actually going to happen to an adult bee or a juvenile bee that's being exposed for days, if not weeks. So we need to understand that, because otherwise we're not looking at the risk. We're catching an acute harm from one thing and we're really not grasping the level of concern that’s out there on the landscape.

Aimée: And then as Sharmeen also mentioned, butterflies—. We need to understand what kind of harm is out there. So we're asking in this petition that they figure out a process to assess that harm that could be caused to our native butterflies and moths. And so pretty simple steps, steps that actually the European Union is already taking, right. We don't have to recreate—we don't have to create a wheel here. We actually can absolutely look to our neighbors to better understand how to evaluate the harm that is being caused by the chemicals that are being put on the market.

Matthew: Yeah, there often seem to be differences between United States and  the European Union in some of this kind of regulatory stuff. And I think you mentioned that you submitted a petition. From where we are at Xerces, every time we mention petition—and this happens with, you know, protecting things under the Endangered Species Act and so on—we always get people saying, “Hey, okay, where do I sign it? Where do I sign it?” This is a very different type of petition, isn't it?

Sharmeen: Bit of a different type of petition. This is an administrative rulemaking petition. So essentially, we're asking EPA to start a process that ideally ends with them codifying new regulations that require pesticide manufacturers to submit testing data on impacts to solitary bees, bumble bees, butterflies, and moths. And along the way, EPA would be required to give notice to the public that they’re undertaking this new regulatory regime, that they're going to promulgate these new regulations, and also solicit input from the public and stakeholders about the proposed regulations. So after EPA has given notice, collected public input, then they would have something to codify in the code of Federal Register that requires pesticide manufacturers to submit more data. And there might be opportunities down the line for the public to show its support for the requests in the petition. But we want to give EPA an opportunity to respond first.

Matthew: Yeah, are they actually required to respond or can they just take it and file it away somewhere?

Sharmeen: Haha. They could do both. No, EPA is required to respond. The Administrative Procedure Act requires that the federal government respond to petitions like this. Conclude matters presented to it within a reasonable time. That's the standard. Courts have interpreted what “reasonable time” means differently. It might be that one year is not yet unreasonable, but two or three years starts to look unreasonable. I will say that a lot of the asks in our petition, as Aimée pointed out, are highly practical. Like we're asking EPA to require things that pesticide manufacturers in Europe are already being asked to submit. Or even in some instances, even EPA is already requesting manufacturers to submit these data, but it's just not codified. And so there's like gaps and a lack of transparency. So we think these requests are highly practical. So maybe it means EPA responds really quickly and we won't be waiting a couple of years, but they do eventually have to respond.

Matthew: And it also sounds like this is things that the companies are already providing to European regulators.

Sharmeen: Exactly.

Matthew: It should be fairly easy for the companies.

Sharmeen: Not to mention, aren't there just like a couple companies? There's like a big overlap between the pesticide manufacturers complying with American law and European law. So they're already doing it over there—do it over here. Haha.

Rachel: So Aimée, you outline some of the changes that you're seeking through this petition, but what would be gained through these changes, if they actually were to happen?

Aimée: We would have the knowledge to be able to respond to the risks that are out there. And I am a person who really works to have—. I believe in the precautionary principle. I believe that if we have a some level of concern out there, we need to be acting. The reality is most people are reactive. And these are chemicals for the most part that are on the market that people are used to buying and using. And so when we find them in the flowers next to a farm, in a backyard garden, in a public park at what seemed like high levels, we don't know if that's a risk or not. And regulators don't know what action to take. So if we have this information—people who right now feel really comfortable with these products, but maybe they shouldn't—we're going to have the data we know to try to convince them to make the change, and to know what kind of change needs to be made, right.

Aimée: In California, we found 100% of the plants that we sampled had contaminants on them. And we didn't know what kind of risk that meant for the vast majority of our bees and butterflies out there. So we didn't know how to say what sort of change needed to happen. This is going to give us that information. Either that, or we just all on our own decide to move to reducing our pesticide use. And so sometimes we need a prompt. That's part of what this is going to do. It's going to give us the prompt, give us the knowledge we know so that we can bring down the contamination to the levels that aren’t causing harm. There's a lot of studies showing that the status quo is causing harm. It's not rogue applicator spraying chemicals in a harmful way. It is standard use, legal use, right now that is actually leading to unreasonable risks.

Matthew: Every time I hear anecdotes from your studies, it's just shocking the prevalence of these products and the numbers of them that are turning up. But I know that a lot of these products are already on the market. So they've already been regulated. If you get rule changes, will they affect existing products in any way, or will it only be on new products?

Sharmeen: Yeah, so this gets to the question around pesticide registration renewal. Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, EPA is required to review the registration for existing pesticides already on the market every 15 years. And that review is meant to ensure that existing pesticides already on the market continue to meet environmental and public health standards under the law. So this also means, in theory, EPA is evaluating, at least every 15 years, whether the pesticides on the market are keeping up with the scientific research about those pesticides impacts. So pursuant to this registration review process every 15 years, EPA conducts a variety of risk assessments. Of course, they're analyzing risk to pollinators, or at least the honey bee, as we've discussed—at least they're looking at the honey bee as a standard for all pollinators. But EPA is also looking at risk to other terrestrial animals, aquatic species, human health, of course.

Sharmeen: So there's this whole suite of tests and risk assessments that EPA is supposed to do for registration review. And if in the course of those risk assessments, EPA is finding that a pesticide poses unreasonable adverse effects to the environment, EPA needs to at least develop mitigation measures and measures to minimize those environmental harms. That's the whole purpose of registration review every 15 years. So EPA is currently preparing its registration renewal decisions for some of the most insect-toxic pesticides on the market, the neonicotinoids. And in fact, they're due to be completed later this year, 2025. So if our petition is successful, we would have a big argument that EPA needs to include pesticide impact data on solitary bees, bumble bees, butterflies, and moths for all those neonicotinoid registration review decisions. Otherwise, those decisions can't be considered complete or compliant with FIFRA.

Matthew: And do you think that the petition might progress fast enough?

Sharmeen: That's the question, right? You heard me say a few minutes ago that it's not necessarily unreasonable—or courts have held that it's not unreasonable—if the agency takes more than a year to respond. So yeah, something is not adding up. But as I keep saying, if our requests are practical, maybe EPA is able to take a look and start considering it this year in time to consider it for the neonicotinoid registration review.

Matthew: Which would be great. 

Sharmeen: Which would be great!

Rachel: I just have a quick question that came to mind: can new pesticides be developed and put on the market in between that 15 years, or do companies have to wait until that registration time? Or is that just a review of what is on the market?

Sharmeen: The registration renewal process is just a review of what's already on the market. New pesticides are being brought to EPA all the time. And EPA is evaluating those product proposals all the time.

Rachel: Okay, but the petition that you are all submitting would impact that, as well, for any new product coming on?

Sharmeen: Oh, Yeah. Yeah. No one's exempt. 

Rachel: Haha. 

Sharmeen: We want new pesticide products to comply with these requests, and we want pesticides that are already on the market to also comply with our requests.

Rachel: That makes sense. Good timing with the 15 years coming up. Haha. Especially with neonics.

Sharmeen: Well, good timing with that, but also it's worth noting that EPA is actually delayed its registration review for the neonics for some years. We originally expected those decisions, I want to say in 2022 and, you know, they're overdue. So it's good timing, but also if you are waiting long enough, then it's always good timing. But fingers crossed this year they get them out.

Rachel: So the question of whether the EPA regulations adequately protect insects is a great relevance given the proposed listing of the monarch announcement that came in December 2024. Do you see this as an essential step for the EPA to help save the species? Is there any interaction here?

Aimée: Absolutely. I—. Exactly what I just explained earlier, where people react to the information that they have. We have almost no data on pesticides and the harm that they pose to monarch. And that really leaves a lot of regulators sort of stumped as to what actions need to happen. In the Central Valley, we were looking at milkweed—and milkweed being really the key essential food source for caterpillars, where adult monarchs will lay their eggs, and the caterpillars feed on—we found 100% of the milkweed that we tested was contaminated, oftentimes with multiple pesticides. We only had information on the toxicity—. Of the 64 chemicals that we found, we had data on nine. None of it was regulatory data. It was independent information from universities. So we didn't know, “What does it mean? Are these residues harmful? And how can we drop that harm so our monarch can survive?”

Aimée: There was one chemical that was actually found 96% of the time, and it is a chemical that is considered to be, you know, moderately to low toxicity to honey bees. But it's because it targets juveniles, and it actually is used to target butterfly and moths—Lepidopteran pests. So it's very likely going to be of concern. It was found in 96% of the plants. And we have no idea if the levels that were there would kill those caterpillars? Would otherwise impair them? Or was it not of harm? I don't think that third option is very likely for 96% of the time. But yes, we need to know. We need to have this data out there in order to be able to respond, in order to bring down that contamination.

Matthew: Yeah, no, I mean, it's kind of stepping back to the big picture again. And dealing with federal agencies, any time you're asking for change, you know, the outcome may be influenced by the political leadership. I mean, as we record this, we're a few days away from a change in the White House. Which means that by the time this podcast is released, the political landscape will have been transformed, potentially, from when you submitted the petition to when the response comes out. How do you think that the change in the White House might influence the outcome of the petition that you submitted, or even the way in which this might proceed?

Sharmeen: So we are not optimistic that the new administration will be rushing to grant our petition requests on day one. But it's worth noting that for all the years EPA has been regulating pesticides, it has never endeavored—under any administration—to consider pesticide impacts on any species other than the honey bee, as far as insects go. So I would call this a bipartisan oversight. And as I have stressed throughout this conversation, if our requests are as practical, achievable—already being achieved elsewhere—as I think they are, then, you know, maybe we'll be surprised. Maybe even in the next administration, EPA says, “You know what, this is not going to be so hard. This will have benefits. Let's grant at least some of these petition requests.” Even in a new administration, you never know. But again, I would really consider this a bipartisan oversight.

Aimée: You know, just weigh in here quickly, as well. I feel like another aspect—if we look at this in a very, very different—from a very different angle. This petition is—and this podcast is—raising awareness amongst the broader populace about the fact that our current system has a lot of failings, and that the contamination is out there right now is of concern. And so whether or not this administration makes the change, we all have the ability to make the change. Whereas yesterday you might have walked into a store and assumed that something that's on the shelf was safe. Tomorrow you're going to walk into that store and you're going to recognize that maybe it isn't. And maybe you do want to seek out another option. So let's shift this to recognizing that we all can make that difference and so—. I don't know. Because I'm not very optimistic. I've been at this for 25 plus years, so I'm—. I think that each one of us is a lot more of a change agent than we think we can be. And I don't want us to forget that. 

Matthew: I think that's a really good thought. I mean, too often we might think that as individuals we can't have a true impact. But there are all these at least small things that we can do. And if we all do something, it certainly adds up.

Aimée: And when you're talking about these small species—I mean, granted monarch fly many, many miles—but we—each one in our own yard—really can make a difference. So, yeah. And jointly together. Well, that's a whole other story. 

Rachel: That was really inspiring. It just warmed my heart. Thank you, Aimée, for saying that. I think sometimes these issues seem so big, you just think, “I'm one person. I can't make a difference.” But that couldn't be further from the truth, because we're all connected in some way, and we can make a big difference. And education is that first step, and—talk to your neighbors, go talk to your friends about this.

Rachel: Well, Sharmeen and Aimée, thank you so much for the work that you're doing and for submitting this petition. I really am anxious to see what happens. And thank you for that reminder that no matter what we can make change on an individual, behavioral level, which I think is really important to remember. So as a new year, we're adding in additional questions at the end of our podcast. We always have one that we always ask, but Matthew is going to cover, but I'm going to ask our new question. If you could see any bug in the wild—and that's anywhere outside, not captivity, you know. In your backyard, could be at a national park, but anywhere in the wild—what bug would that be? And bug is a loose term. Haha.

Aimée: That is so hard. I mean, even in just the U.S. we've got like 140,000 invertebrates out there, right. That said, I have—. I am so excited, you guys. I'm actually about to take a vacation, and I'm going around the world. I'm—my carbon footprint for the first time in a long time is going to be kind of big this year. I try not to. Bike commuter—but I'm going to Indonesia. And they have the coolest bugs, right? And my daughter and I—my daughter who is a SNL fan, Saturday Night Live, really loves the Coneheads—and we figured out that there is a katydid there that is called, I think it's a cone-headed grasshopper. Nothing like Dan Aykroyd, if you are a Conehead fan. But I—we want to see this bug. We got to see the cone head, right? Does it actually look like Dan Aykroyd? I don't know. But there's so many others. The butterflies that are going to be spectacular. There's some gorgeous actual grasshoppers that are blue and red, and yeah, so that's what I want to see. I want to see a cone-head grasshopper, which is actually a katydid.

Sharmeen: My answer is closer to home, I think. It's the figeater beetle. I would love to see one again. I saw one in my backyard a long time ago. And it was just like this gigantic, really noisy beetle flying around, with this beautiful green jewel tone. So noisy, pretty clumsy. Like banging—it kept like running into our window, poor thing. Like, I think it was fine, but it's just like not a good flyer. And I have since looked up that part of the reason they call a figeater beetle a clumsy flyer is because it only uses its hind legs to fly. And it's just like so big that it’s so—. Anyway, it was just like a little magical to see this bug flying around in my backyard. I would love to see one again, but I haven't been blessed with a sighting ever since.

Matthew: One thing I love about insects is the fact that you can have these amazing interactions and experiences literally in your backyard. There's so much out there to be discovered. And so as Rachel says, we have our long-standing final question. And it’s: what inspired you to work, or to end up working, in the world of pesticide reform? What kind of led you to this point?

Aimée: There's so many ways to answer that. I often reflect back to my great uncle, and I used to spend a lot of time at his farm. And he had this amazing diversified farm with all of these, you know, wild plants all around. He was this crazy old Welsh guy, and he believed in having the wild spaces because that's where the wee folk lived, and you needed the wee folk to support the rest of your farm. And I often wondered if the wee folk were the pollinators and all the other beneficial insects. But he didn't say that to me as a little kid. So I think when I got to college and I started learning more about agriculture and the idea that we were purposefully choosing to put poisons on the planet, and thinking that that was a management technique for growing our food, for handling our yards, taking care of different problems. It just didn't seem right to me. And then that just was hammered home even further when I worked in Peace Corps in Honduras and saw firsthand the kind of harms that were happening to people and the environment from chemical use. So yeah, I just knew after Peace Corps, I went back to grad school, studied toxicology with the intent of making a difference in this world—reducing pesticide use.

Sharmeen: For me, I think a lot of it is about this huge power imbalance between pesticide manufacturers and the general public. I mean, just learning—not so long ago—but learning that most of the pesticides applied in the United States are applied preemptively. Like, before there's a demonstrated pest problem, growers are applying like huge quantities of pesticides. That was really eye-opening for me. Like, you haven't even gotten word that you need to apply this pesticide and you're applying it in such massive amounts. Also, the fact that it's manufacturers themselves that are submitting the data on pesticide impacts, and when EPA evaluates pesticide risks they don't actually give the independent scientific research as much weight as the data submitted by the manufacturers themselves. So all of this amounts to a picture where the pesticides we're using are really toxic to the environment and they're used on such a massive scale, and the web of life is paying for it. So I have just really wanted to play even a small role in moving that needle.

Matthew: Yeah, well, thank you.

Rachel: Thank you so much for taking the time to be here today and to talk to our listeners. And it was just so nice to spend this afternoon with you. So thank you.

Sharmeen: Thank you so much, Rachel and Matthew. This has been a pleasure.

Aimée: It really has. Thank you so much. 

Matthew: Yeah, thanks for joining us.

Matthew: Bug Banter is brought to you by the Xerces Society, a donor-supported nonprofit that is working to protect insects and other invertebrates—the life that sustains us. 

Matthew: If you’re already a donor, thank you so much. If you want to support our work go to xerces.org/donate. For information about this podcast and show notes go to xerces.org/bugbanter.