Scientists
say bees — crucial to pollinate many crops — have been hurt by a combination of
declining nutrition, mites, disease, and pesticides.
In Ontario,
politicians have decided that neonicitinoid seed treatment pesticides are the
main culprit and have angered crop farmers by proposing drastic reductions in
the use of neonicitinoids.
The Ontario cabinet could surely do better by studying and adopting the U.S. approach.
The U.S. federal
plan is an "all hands on deck" strategy that calls on everyone from
federal bureaucrats to citizens to do what they can to save bees, which provide
more than $15 billion in value to the U.S. economy, according to White House
science adviser John Holdren.
"Pollinators
are struggling," Holdren said in a blog post, citing a new federal survey
that found beekeepers lost more than 40 percent of their colonies last year,
although they later recovered by dividing surviving hives.
He also said the
number of monarch butterflies that spend the winter in Mexico's forests is down
by 90 percent or more over the past two decades, so the U.S. government is
working with Mexico to expand monarch habitat in the southern part of that
country.
I haven't heard a peep out of the Ontario cabinet about helping Monarch butterflies. Maybe its conservation authorities could plant some milkweed.
The U.S. plan
calls for restoring seven million acres of bee habitat in the next five years.
Numerous federal agencies will have to find ways to grow plants on federal
lands that are more varied and better for bees to eat because scientists have
worried that large land tracts that grow only one crop have hurt bee nutrition.
The plan is
not just for the Department of
Interior, which has vast areas of land under its control. Agencies
that wouldn't normally be thought of, such as Housing and
Urban Development and the Department of
Transportation, will have to include bee-friendly landscaping on
their properties and in grant-making.
That part of
the bee plan got praise from scientists who study bees.
