Trump Quietly OK’s Bioengineered Farming on Wildlife Refuges.

Trump Quietly OK’s Bioengineered Farming on Wildlife Refuges. When you think about America’s wildlife refuges, a lush rolling mountain range or untrammeled wetland preserve might come to mind—not a field clouded with industrial weedkillers. There’s a good reason for that: A few years ago, the Obama administration barred two controversial forms of biotechnology on designated wildlife preserves, neonicotinoid pesticides and genetically modified crops, to help the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) better uphold its public mandate of conservation and wildlife protection. But the Trump administration is seeking to make the country’s wilderness safe for agrichemicals again. In a terse memorandum, seemingly unprompted, the FWS quietly rescinded a hard-won Obama-era legal agreement, which imposed a blanket ban on the pesticides and genetically modified crops on the agricultural lands currently hosted in national wildlife refuges. Trump Quietly OK’s Bioengineered Farming on Wildlife Refuges. The Trump administration’s new plans for agrichemicals allows the use of pesticides and GMOs on farmlands located in the habitats of individual wildlife refuges across the United States. This could open the door to wide application of two high-risk biotechnologies. One is genetically modified crops, which have expanded the monopoly power of seed giants like Monsanto across the agricultural supply chain and have often come with increased use of the company’s controversial Roundup glyphosate herbicides. Additionally, the agreement allows refuge-based farms to use neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides associated with the disruption of ecosystems and damage to critical bee populations. Activists say that the chemicals the Trump administration is quietly promoting on conservation areas are known for posing environmental and public-health risks and would upend the fundamental mission of wildlife refuges.