Mormon crickets congregate on top of a wood pile in the yard of a residence in north-centeral Oregon. Southwestern Idaho growers also report large numbers of the pest.

The USDA’s pesticide spraying program for crickets and grasshoppers across the West violated the National Environmental Policy Act, according to a federal judge.

U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez has determined the agency’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, failed to subject its pesticide treatment regime to sufficiently rigorous study under the law.

The USDA’s evaluation of the spray program, which was completed in 2019, “is too narrow and does not contain sufficient detail to foster reasoned decision-making,” the judge said.

The agency focused exclusively on “direct intervention” by killing crickets and grasshoppers with pesticides, intending to protect rangeland forage for livestock in 17 Western states, he said.

Despite requirements to use “integrated pest management” techniques, or IPM, to prevent pest outbreaks, the agency “appears to foreclose any consideration of any non-suppression methods of managing the grasshopper population,” the judge said.

During oral arguments earlier this year, the USDA claimed its analysis of pesticide use was appropriate and included several mitigation measures, such as no-spray buffer zones and timing restrictions to protect non-target insects.

“The focus on suppression was perfectly reasonable for APHIS to focus on here. When there is an outbreak, it’s too late for anything else,” said John Tustin, attorney for the agency.

The Xerces Society and the Center for Biological Diversity, which filed a lawsuit against the grasshopper and cricket spray program, said the USDA wouldn’t need to rely as heavily on pesticides if it incorporated IPM methods.

“You could possibly have fewer outbreaks if you take this holistic approach, which is what they are supposed to do,” said Andrew Missel, attorney for the plaintiffs.

The judge has agreed with the environmental nonprofits, ruling that USDA “expressly shirks incorporating any IPM techniques” by claiming such methods “are the responsibility of other land managers and land owners.”

The spray program was approved without adequately detailed consideration of “butterflies, moths and native bees,” as well as other “sensitive environmental resources” that may be affected by pesticide spraying, according to the ruling.

Also, the USDA should have better examined the combined effects of its spray program with pesticide treatments by other land managers, the judge said.

“Missing from the analysis is a discussion of how adjacent pesticide use or overlapping pesticide use by different actors could have a cumulative effect on the environment,” Hernandez said

State-level evaluations of pesticide spraying in Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana also fell short of legal requirements under NEPA, though they were supposed to provide a more specific level of detail, he said.

“But the (analysis) lacks any specificity as to site-specific resources near these areas, only generally describing the geography and resources of the entire possible treatment area,” the judge said.

While the ruling faults the USDA for violating federal law, the judge hasn’t overturned the agency’s approval for the spray program.

Legal remedies for the violation will be subject to further litigation, with the parties ordered to submit a proposed schedule and joint status report within a month.