Oregon pesticide applicators will be able to stay certified through a virtual training in December. The training provides CORE credits approved by Oregon Department of Agriculture’s “Worker Protection Standard: What You Should Know” program.

Most pesticide uses would be prohibited across immense swaths of land in western Oregon and Washington under a federal proposal to heighten protections for an endangered butterfly.

The strict new pesticide limits are considered overkill by both farm and environmental advocates, who want to persuade the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency they should be scaled back or replaced with less drastic measures.

“It’s incredibly extreme and unnecessary,” said Katie Murray, executive director of the Oregonians for Food and Shelter agribusiness group.

The Center for Biological Diversity environmental group supports stronger pesticide regulations, but doesn’t want needless impacts on agriculture to blow back on the agency.

“We actually agree the areas they’ve proposed for avoidance are over-broad,” said Lori Ann Burd, a senior attorney with the nonprofit. “This is one rare moment we can say we agree: This is excessive.”

The Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly is just one of 27 species to receive enhanced protections under EPA’s pilot program, which the agriculture industry fears will eventually justify additional pesticide restrictions across the U.S.

“Presumably, their goal would be to expand this to other species, which would be disastrous to producers,” Murray said.

Under EPA’s proposal, aerial and broadcast spraying of all conventional pesticides would be prohibited with some exemptions, such as indoor, residential and “small scale spot-treatment applications.”

The limitation would apply to more than a million acres in the western and southern portions of Oregon’s Willamette Valley and on lands surrounding Washington’s Puget Sound.

“The root of a lot of this is the use of litigation and the court system to push the agency,” Murray said.

In past years, multiple lawsuits accused the EPA of violating the Endangered Species Act by failing to consult with federal fish and wildlife experts on the effects of pesticides.

Settlements in those cases have spurred strategies to better shield threatened and endangered species from toxins, such as the recently-proposed pilot program that includes the Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly.

“EPA acknowledges that this is a broad approach with many strict mitigations, but it is important to note that this pilot project is applied to a relatively small area and is intended to protect the most vulnerable species,” the agency said in a draft plan.

However, Oregonians for Food and Shelter and the Center for Biological Diversity both believe the “pesticide use limitation area” includes inordinately large tracts of farmland that aren’t even inhabited by the butterfly.

“The spots where it exists are where agriculture is not currently occurring, because it would cease to exist,” said Burd, the environmental group’s attorney. “If this species exists somewhere, it’s not in any ag zone.”

The concept is also frustrating because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says herbicides will be critical to prevent invasive species from crowding out native plants on which the butterfly depends, Murray said.

The EPA will likely implement the pilot program next year, which still leaves time to convince the agency to adopt a less draconian strategy, she said.

“My guess is something will go into effect, we just hope it won’t be so extreme,” Murray said.

The Center for Biological Diversity is confident the EPA will heed that advice, particularly since the nonprofit will echo those criticisms and propose restrictions on a much smaller scope.

“I think they’ll fix this once they get feedback about where the species is found,” Burd said.

Neither the EPA or the environmental group has any incentive to impose restrictions that would harm agriculture without aiding the butterfly’s recovery, she said.

“We want this to be broadly accepted and embraced,” Burd said.

Farmers will also find it easier to comply with regulations that apply to multiple pesticides, rather than trying to abide by different rules for each chemical, she said. In cases of compelling need, they’ll likely obtain exemptions as well.

“It still leaves flexibility but it does provide more certainty,” Burd said.

The EPA may have proposed an overly expansive territory by including the historic range of the butterflies, even though “most of their habitat is gone,” she said.

Hopefully, the Fish and Wildlife Service will help “drill down” and “tailor” the restrictions to the current occupancy zone, she said. “They need to step it up and be more involved to provide the EPA with more guidance.”