pollinators

Urban butterfly populations dropped by 69 percent compared with a 45 percent fall in rural areas since 1995, a study in the journal Ecological Indications says. While industrial agriculture, with its heavy use of chemicals and monoculture cropping, has long been considered the prime suspect in dwindling pollinator numbers, researchers say that urban butterflies are hurting even worse.

The Obama administration has granted endangered-species protection to the rusty-patched bumblebee — the first bumblebee in the United States, and the first bee of any kind in the lower 48 states to get the designation, says The New York Times. Seven other bees are listed, but they are all from Hawaii.

General Mills is teaming up with the Xerces Society, a wildlife conservation nonprofit, to help save pollinators, says The Guardian. The food manufacturer, which has contributed $4 million to other pollinator conservation projects since 2011,says it will give $2 million to the Xerces-led program to make 100,000 acres of North American farmland pollinator-friendly over the next five years.

With enrollment in the land-idling Conservation Reserve nearing its statutory limit of 24 million acres, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced revisions in the program to protect water quality and to benefit wildlife, pollinators and wetlands. Under one of the changes, USDA will pay up to 90 percent of the cost of environmentally beneficial practices, such as bioreactors and saturated buffers that clean up run-off from drainage lines running beneath cropland.

Public-health officials know that the insecticides that kill mosquitoes, in order to prevent Zika and other diseases, also are fatal to honeybees, butterflies and imperiled species, says Ensia in describing an emerging interest in minimizing environmental harm. "We're just at the beginning stages, trying to figure out what we need to focus on," said Patricia Bright, senior science adviser for the U.S. Geological Survey.

Along the Arizona-Mexico border, conservationists are restoring habitat for more than 900 species of wild pollinators in an unprecedented effort that's also designed to create jobs and reduce poverty, reports Alexis Marie Adams in FERN’s latest story, co-produced with Scientific American.

U.S. district judge William Alsup said he is sympathetic to the plight of bees and beekeepers but he cannot force the EPA to regulate neonicotinoid seed coatings as a pesticide. The environmental group Center for Food Safety, which represented the plaintiffs, said the decision was "a crushing blow" to attempts to control the side effects of the coatings.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has placed the first bees ever on the federal endangered species list, with the addition of seven Hawaiian species from the genus Hylaeus, says National Geographic. Yellow-faced bees are the only native bees to Hawaii and the sole pollinators of a beach shrub known as naupaka, known for having flowers that look like they’re missing half their petals.

Pesticide manufacturers Syngenta and Bayer appear to have secreted away studies that showed their pesticides did serious harm to honeybees, rather than revealing the results to the public. After Greenpeace obtained the studies from the EPA through the Freedom of Information Act, scientists are calling on the two companies to operate with more transparency, says The Guardian.

The level of neonicotinoid pesticides found on plants sold by large retailers to gardeners dropped to 23 percent this spring, according to a survey that looked at garden plants in 14 U.S. cities. In 2013 and 2014, neonicotinoid residue was found on more than half of the samples taken. Some experts blame the class of pesticides for Colony Collapse Disorder and other detrimental effects on pollinators.

An 18-year study of 60 wild bee species in Britain found that populations declined when the bees foraged on crops treated with neonicintinoid pesticides, according to the Washington Post. "The study provides some of the first evidence that the effects of neonicotinoid exposure can scale up to cause major damage to bees," the Post said.

Under terms of a settlement, the Interior Department will rule by June 30, 2019, whether the monarch butterfly, which has suffered a huge drop in population, deserves protection under the Endangered Species Act, said two environmental groups. The groups say without help, the well-known orange-and-black insect is at risk of extinction.

Honeybees and other insect pollinators rely on scent to find plants from thousands of feet away while foraging for food, but air pollutants break down the scent molecules, says a team of researchers led by Penn State. As a result, bees spend more time searching for food and less time pollinating.

Three of every five acres in the long-term Conservation Reserve provides "healthy habitat and forage" for honeybees and other pollinators, said USDA, as part of National Pollinator Week. Some 269,000 acres are enrolled in a program that focuses on pollinator health but a review found 15 million of the 23.4 million acres in the reserve have wildflowers, shrubs and safe nesting places conducive to pollinators, which include birds.

Between December and March this year, prime pollinating season, 1,734 beehives were stolen from almond groves in California, the nation’s largest producer of the nuts. It is part of a troubling, and relatively new, criminal enterprise that has caught both growers and law enforcement by surprise.

The world's largest manufacturer of lawn and garden care products, Scotts Miracle-Gro, said it will "immediately begin to transition away from the use of neonicotinoid-based pesticides for outdoor use" sold under the Ortho brand name.

Minnesota compensated two beekeepers for severe damage to hives caused by neonicotinoid insecticide dust from the field where a neighbor was planting corn, says the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It was the first test of a landmark environmental law, says the newspaper.

In FERN's latest piece, and the last from our special food issue with Switchyard magazine, reporter Dan Charles takes us through an agricultural mystery that leads, disturbingly, to a regulatory failure that threatens bees and other pollinators still today.