The Center for Biological Diversity and the Center for Food Safety submitted a petition for rulemaking to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS), asking the agency to ban the use of wildlife-harming agricultural pesticides like glyphosate, dicamba, and paraquat on national wildlife refuges, which are home to more than 280 species of protected plants and animals. FWS currently allows private operators to grow commercial crops that trigger the use of hundreds of thousands of pounds of pesticides that are toxic to wildlife, the environment, and human visitors. In 2018 alone, more than 350,000 pounds of agricultural pesticides were sprayed in the refuges.
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