A Minnesota beekeeper has won a round against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a protracted lawsuit over a class of insecticides implicated in the decline of honeybees and other wild insects.

A federal judge in California ruled this week that, in doing a regular review of the pesticides, the EPA failed to consider the potential impact of neonicotinoids on insects on the federal Endangered Species list, as required by law.

Due to climate change, the increased use of pesticides and a range of other causal factors, bee populations have decreased steadily over the past years. Now a new report from the Center for Biological Diversity has found that population levels of more than 700 North American bee species are in decline due to habitat loss and pesticide use. This decline threatens the food supply and public health.

The world’s most widely used insecticides would be banned from all fields across Europe under draft regulations from the European commission

The EU has been criticised after a new legal analysis showed it had allowed scores of “emergency authorisations” of banned pesticides that threaten bee colonies.