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Bees provide the crucial ecosystem service of pollination, but are under threat, with 37% of EU bee species with known trends exhibiting population declines. One apparent cause of these declines is pesticides. Pesticide usage is pervasive, with 4.1 billion kilograms of active ingredient applied globally in 2017, nearly double the amount used in 1990.
Wildlife and humans can and should co-exist in sustainable, healthy communities. Community leaders such as mayors, city councilors, county commissioners, and municipal staff across the country are making the connection between healthy, sustainable human communities and wildlife conservation by issuing wildlife-friendly proclamations that promote resident engagement around wildlife conservation and habitat restoration.
As humans have industrialised farming to feed a growing global population, pollinators – animals vital for plant reproduction – have seen their food supply decline. In the UK, intensive agriculture has eroded biological diversity in large portions of the countryside, with vast swathes of cereal crops and ryegrass pastures now replacing flower-rich habitats.
For years, Toni Genberg assumed a healthy garden was a healthy habitat. That’s how she approached the landscaping around her home in northern Virginia. On trips to the local gardening center, she would privilege aesthetics, buying whatever looked pretty, “which was typically ornamental or invasive plants,” she says. Then, in 2014, Genberg attended a talk by Doug Tallamy, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware. “I learned I was actually starving our wildlife,” she says.
One day last fall, deep in the middle of a devastating drought, I was walking the dog when a van bearing the logo of a mosquito-control company blew past me and parked in front of a neighbor’s house. The whole vehicle stank of chemicals, even going 40 miles an hour.
As explained by the Alliance of Crop, Soil and Environmental Science Societies, “neonicotinoids are the most widely used insecticides in the world.” If you were to visit a conventional farm, you’d likely see evidence of their use in the form of brightly colored red corn seeds and blue soybean seeds, which are color-coded to denote treatment with neonicotinoids.
Thanks to a record wet spring, his hundreds of hives, scattered across the central Arizona desert, produced a bounty of honey. Arp would have plenty to sell in stores, but more importantly, the bumper harvest would strengthen his bees for their biggest task of the coming year.
It is a wild understatement to say it has been a hard year in agriculture. It has been a year of loss, heartbreak and stress. As a frontpage Washington Post article captured, “Farm bankruptcies and loan delinquencies are rising, calamitous weather events are ruining crops and profits are vanishing during Trump’s global trade disputes.”
Unbeknownst to many Americans, a majority of soybean, corn, canola and sunflower seeds planted in the U.S. are precoated with neonicotinoid insecticides, also known as “neonics.” Needless to say, since the chemical is taken up systemically through the plant, it cannot be rinsed off.
A 2015 report by the American Bird Conservancy revealed neonics were found in congressional cafeteria food, demonstrating just how pervasive they have become in our food supply.
The polar bear has become the poster child for climate change. Just picture one of the furry white giants struggling to hang on to a melting ice cap and it’s clear why a fast-warming planet is a bad thing.
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