Washington — Sunflower growers will have to wait until next spring to find out whether they can poison blackbirds that are ravaging their crops.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, a branch of the Agriculture Department, last year proposed laying out poisoned rice to kill as many as 6 million blackbirds, with the goal of reducing overall damage to sunflower crops by about half.
However, an environmental review required before the USDA program can begin has taken longer than expected. Last week saw the end of the period to collect public comment on the program, and now the federal agency will take up to three months to write a draft of its proposal.
"We hope to have that draft available for public review in April or May or so," said Phil Mastrangelo, state director of Wildlife Services for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) bureau in Bismarck, N.D.
Mastrangelo said the agency had hoped growers could begin baiting migrating blackbirds by this spring, but money to pay for the environmental impact statement was late in coming because of the federal budget debate in Washington.
That means the poisoning program if accepted will not be in place until the spring of 2003.
Growers estimate that up to $10 million worth of sunflowers are destroyed each year by blackbirds migrating through the Great Plains states of North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota, where most of the nation's sunflowers are grown.
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