This week is National Pollinator Week — a great time to celebrate bees and pollinators essential for our food production and healthy ecosystems, and to call attention to their rapid decline.
Also this week, the Obama administration issued a memorandum establishing a new Pollinator Health Task Force. The Task Force will conduct research on pollinator declines and create a public education campaign to teach people how to protect pollinators. It also provides funding to create new bee habitats in five states.
It’s encouraging that the Obama administration recognizes the importance of pollinators for our food supply, farmers, the economy and the planet. But this plan doesn’t do enough to protect these small but essential creatures.
It fails to take definitive action on a key factor contributing to the bee die-offs and one they could do something about now — neonicotinoid pesticides.
A growing body of scientific evidence points to neonicotinoids — the world’s most widely used insecticides that treat 140 crops — as a key contributor to the bee declines. Recent studies show they are also harming birds, butterflies and other beneficial insects. Neonicotinoids can kill bees outright and make them more susceptible to disease, pests and other stressors. Just one seed coated in these pesticides is enough to kill a songbird.
Pollinators are in big trouble, and the administration can’t ignore the science telling us that pesticides are harming bees. Clearly, the U.S. must follow the lead of the European Union, which has placed a two-year moratorium on neonicotinoids.
