Information and Resources on the Use of Aerial Pesticide Application in Forestry
People have questions about aerial application. Oregonians for Food and Shelter is here to help our communities understand the purpose of these applications and the measures that are taken to keep our water resources, forests, and communities safe.
HELPFUL RESOURCES
Oregonians For Food & Shelter’s Overview of Aerial Pesticide Application in Forestry
Oregon Department of Forestry’s Overview of Herbicide Use in Forestry
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
1. Why and how often are pesticides used in forestry?
Pesticides, specifically herbicides, which kill weeds, are used in forestry as part of reforestation efforts after harvest. They play a key role in preventing weeds and invasive species like blackberries and scotch broom from choking out new seedlings.
Herbicide use in forestry is extremely minimal, with application occurring typically only two or three times in an area of forest during the first few years of a 40-70 year period.
Foresters prioritize public safety, and are deeply committed to safeguarding their families and communities.
2. What laws regulate pesticide use?
Pesticides are strictly regulated by overlapping federal and state laws. There are overarching laws like the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act, within which pesticide regulation takes place. The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) regulates pesticide distribution, sale, and use. All pesticides distributed or sold in the United States must be registered (licensed) by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Registered pesticides have been determined – through extensive testing – to pose no unreasonable risk to human health or the environment.
Oregon also has some of the strictest forest protection laws in the country. These laws are based on science and collaboration between scientists, health experts, industry, and environmental groups. In 1971, Oregon became the first state to pass a comprehensive law – the Oregon Forest Practices Act – regulating forest practices and helping safeguard water, fish, and wildlife habitats, soil, and the air. The Act, which has been updated over 40 times since passage, regulates all areas of forest management from road layout to herbicide use. Some example of requirements include:
Professional applicators are licensed by the state and must complete annual training to stay up to date on best practices.
Landowners must replant trees in harvested areas within two years of a harvest.
Within six years, trees must be “free to grow” (not crowded out by weeds) vigorous, and well distributed. Herbicides are an important tool in achieving the free-to-grow requirement.
Depending on a site’s productivity, a minimum of 100 to 200 trees per acre must survive following replanting.
The Act is continually reviewed and updated to keep pace with the most current scientific research.
In addition to the Oregon Forest Practices Act, Oregon recently enacted new legislation through the Private Forest Accord. A collaborative agreement between the timber industry and environmental groups, the Accord established new protections for water and aquatic habitats.
3. What regulations protect water quality, wildlife, and surrounding communities?
The Private Forest Accord initiated even stricter regulations to protect water quality so that our water resources are safe for people and wildlife:
Larger buffers have been enacted to protect water sources and surrounding communities. There are wider harvest buffers to protect water and fish habitat and new protections for helicopter application of herbicides to protect homes, schools, water intakes, and streams. More trees left standing means streams will have better water filtration and temperature control, benefiting both fish habitats and drinking water quality.
Not only will larger buffers better protect drinking water quality, but increased restrictions on harvest on steep slopes and new forest road regulations are designed to reduce sediment entering streams.
Oregon’s environmental groups agree that current forest management practices adequately protect fish habitats, which translates to healthy drinking water as well. What’s good for fish is good for people.
The Oregon forest products industry has long supported appropriate and evolving regulations to protect the environment and the public. This framework has successfully protected Oregonians’ health and the environment while providing renewable building materials needed for housing.
4. Why is aerial application necessary in forestry?
Aerial application is often the safest, fastest, most efficient, and high-tech way to apply herbicides to harvested acres, to ensure the success of a newly planted forest. Much of Oregon’s forestland is remote, with steep terrain that can be difficult for ground applicators.
While ground treatment is an important tool and appropriate in some places, specifically for spot treatment, in many areas it would require more forest roads and can present safety concerns for workers who need to traverse steep and dangerous landscapes with their equipment. Aerial application minimizes impacts to the forest landscape, and safeguards the health of applicators and surrounding communities.
5. What actions do foresters take to prevent aerial applications from drifting into watersheds and surrounding communities?
Extensive regulations protect Oregon’s water resources and the health of surrounding communities, and any amount of pesticide drift is illegal in Oregon.
Applicators applying pesticides aerially have to hold more than one specific license, which involves extensive hours of training. Licensed professionals abide by safe and targeted approaches to prevent drift or unintended impacts, including:
Reviewing and abiding by pesticide labeling to ensure proper use.
Use of technologies including nozzles and drift-prevention solutions.
Utilization of GPS software to ensure exact applications.
Avoiding application within 300 feet of schools, residential areas, and water intakes.
Avoiding application in or near streams.
Avoiding spraying in certain weather (e.g., windy conditions).
Submission of application records to the Oregon Department of Agriculture.
These approaches and more have proven effective in protecting our water and communities. In fact, Oregon has among the cleanest water quality in the nation.
6. What monitoring takes place to ensure that rules and regulations are followed, and pesticides are applied correctly?
Drinking water protection is implemented in Oregon through a partnership between the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) and the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). These agencies regularly inspect and measure water quality to ensure compliance with Oregon’s Safe Drinking Water Act and with laws regulating pesticide application (See above). Further, the Oregon DEQ regularly measures water quality in major rivers and streams throughout the state.
Foresters have taken great care to safely treat their lands and follow guidelines to ensure applications remain on target. The Oregon Department of Forestry's most recent Compliance Monitoring Report demonstrated overall 98% compliance with forest practice rules and 99% compliance with water rules. Even before Oregon adopted the Private Forest Accord in 2020, measurements consistently demonstrated that forestlands provide the highest-quality drinking water of any land in the state, including forests with active harvest and herbicide application activities.
The DEQ and the Oregon Department of Agriculture partnered on a 2019-2021 biennial report for the Pesticide Stewardship Partnership. That report found that more than 90% of sites sampled over the last 10 years (agricultural, forest, and urban) have shown either improving or non-significant changes in pesticide concentrations over time.
Over the last 10 years, only 8.5% of 257 sample sites appeared to be associated with any negative trends in water quality connected to pesticide concentrations.
Further, pesticides were only detected in 8% of samples taken from forested areas over the same period.
Evaluations by the Pesticide Stewardship Program in both South Yamhill and South Umpqua concluded that applications used in forestry lie within the low concern category.
An assessment of the McKenzie watershed by the Eugene Water and Electric Board (EWEB) found that its water quality “meets or exceeds all state and federal drinking water health standards. This is despite private industrial forestland accounting for the greatest single land use (about 37%) in the McKenzie watershed. Despite extensive testing for hundreds of potential contaminants, they found no evidence of contamination from forestry. In 2012, EWEB concluded that “forestry pesticide use is not considered a likely threat to drinking water quality.”
Statewide, there have only been five incidents of drift from aerial herbicide applications to forestland in the past five years. An average of one incident per year relative to the thousands of applications demonstrates the success of Oregon’s existing laws and regulations.
The bottom line is that existing forestry practices and laws are successfully safeguarding Oregonians while ensuring healthy lands and waters.
7. Why do forest landowners use glyphosate?
Glyphosate is an herbicide that foresters use to treat invasive species and prevent them from spreading and displacing newly planted trees. Like all pesticides, glyphosate has been reviewed and re-reviewed by the EPA to ensure it is safe for use. Glyphosate has also been studied by regulatory agencies in Canada, Japan, Australia, and the European Union, among others, as well as the Joint Meeting on Pesticide Residues of the United Nations and World Health Organization (WHO). These regulatory agencies have all studied the risk of cancer from glyphosate within the context of its use, and determined that there is no cancer risk when the product is used as intended.