Wildlife Wednesday: Study Finds Pesticides widespread in albuquerque

By Ben Neary

NMWF Conservation Director

Most plants sampled from Albuquerque public spaces and private gardens tested positive for trace levels of pesticides, even in areas where landowners themselves haven’t sprayed any of the substances, a recent research project has found. 

The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation conducted the research. Kaitlin Haase, pollinator conservation specialist with the organization, will discuss the findings at a free presentation Jan. 14 in Albuquerque. Haase's presentation is part of the New Mexico Wildlife Federation’s Wildlife Wednesday series. Her talk will begin at 5:30 p.m. at Marble Brewery’s Northeast Height’s Taproom, at 9904 Montgomery Blvd., NE.

Haase holds a master’s degree in environmental science from Northern Arizona University where she did research on aquatic invertebrates. She has worked on wildlife issues with several environmental organizations.

The Xerces Society research examined green spaces, including parks and private yards in Albuquerque and Sacramento, Calif. It focused on determining whether plants that serve as hosts for larval butterflies contained herbicides, insecticides and fungicides.

Of 336 plants sampled in both locations, only 22 had no detectable levels of pesticides. Atrazine, a weedkiller, was detected in 70 percent of the Albuquerque samples. 

“My colleagues collected plants back in 2022,” Haase said. “So it’s been three years since collection, but the paper was just published this year (2025). It takes a little while in academia to do that. The main takeaways were that 92 percent of the plants sampled were contaminated.

“Basically, the plants were sampled across 10 different sites in Albuquerque,” Haase said. “Five were private residences and five were public parks. And out of all the plants sampled, 92 percent were contaminated. Thirty-one different compounds were detected. So, quite a few. Up to 11 were detected per plant, with an average of 2.6. So if there was detection, which was the case for most of them, it usually wasn’t just one chemical. The most common one found was atrazine, which is a pre-emergent herbicide, and that was found in 70 percent of plants.”

Atrazine is widely used in agriculture to prevent weed seeds from coming up, Haase said. It’s also used in some landscaping, she said. “I assume there’s a lot being used on rock mulch areas, any kind of sidewalks to prevent weeds from coming up. And a lot of private situations,” she said.

The testing looked for any amount of pesticides, and many of the results found showed only trace amounts on plants, Haase said. The study found a couple of places where pesticide amounts were high enough to kill 10 percent of a population of Monarch Butterflies if they were exposed to it, she said.

 “We have so little tox data on most of these things, and we don’t know how they interact with each other," Haase said. “ So since there are multiple compounds on one plant, how that impacts something versus the one compound, we don’t know. So there’s just so much unknown here.”

Most of the home gardens tested were owned by people who don’t use any pesticides, Haase said.

“But obviously, pesticides were found in their yards,” Haase said. “We think in particular, atrazine is really volatile and is in the air pretty easily. So there’s definitely chances of it coming in from air currents. There’s also the chance that materials could be bringing different compounds in, like mulches or soil, even water. So it’s definitely hard to say exactly where it’s coming from. But there are definitely instances where people aren’t using pesticides at all, but there’s drift.”

Some of the Albuquerque findings showed levels of pesticides high enough to cause death to some pollinating insects, Haase said. “There’s probably a lot going on that affects insect mobility and other factors that doesn’t outright kill them,” she said.

The Xerces Society concludes that the test results show the need for further study on the effects of pesticides on nontarget species of insects, Haase said.

The New Mexico Legislature in early 2025 expanded the mission of the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. The 2025 State Wildlife Action Plan places increased emphasis on protecting pollinators and lists scores of butterflies and other species as being in need of increased conservation.

“There’s several insects now considered species of greatest conservation need. Many of them are urban species that could be using host plants in yards and gardens,” Haase said of the State Wildlife Action Plan. “And while the concentrations of these compounds aren’t extremely high, there are still a lot of unknowns. So finding, I think, opportunities to reduce pesticide use by any major landscape or management group is important in that we work with the city, potentially work with conservation districts, any large urban farms in Albuquerque, and see how their vegetation management could impact these pollinators.”

New Mexico lacks an adequate system of requiring government and private users to report what pesticides they’re applying on their grounds, Haase said. She suggested the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish could work more closely with the New Mexico Department of Agriculture to create a pesticide use reporting system, or otherwise work with entities that apply pesticides, to find ways to reduce pesticide usage and drift.

“There’s a lot of drift going on because it’s getting into places where it shouldn’t be,” Haase said. “I think there are better ways for applying, better times for application potentially, and then finding alternatives to reduce use entirely.”

Public education about the prevalence of pesticides can play an important part in encouraging less risky application practices, Haase said. Informing people that pesticides are drifting into private gardens provides an important foundation for that, she said.