The federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has canceled plans to spray insecticides on the Colorado Plateau north of the Grand Canyon to kill grasshoppers and crickets.
The agency issued the proposal earlier this year, saying the insecticides would help ranchers harmed by grasshoppers competing with livestock for forage, and that the effects on non-target species could be minimized.
The Center for Biological Diversity protested the plan, though. The nonprofit said it would include spraying insecticides inside portions of the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument, Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument and the newly designated Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument.
They argue that grasshoppers and crickets go through natural cycles of abundance and that insecticide would have harmed bees and other insects.