Native pollinator protection
Bella Reid is a Junior at Pitzer College majoring in Environmental Analysis.
Globally, insect pollinators populations are collapsing at alarming rates.[1] The crisis of pollinator collapse is a crisis in food security—one-third of the food produced in the United States depends on bee pollination, thus, stable bee pollinator populations are essential to maintain food system integrity.[2] In addition to providing foundational support for global food security, pollinators support farmer livelihoods, global biodiversity, and ecosystem functioning and integrity.[3] While most media attention surrounding pollinator collapse has focused on declines of honey bee populations, native bees, such as bumble bees, are also declining rapidly. Native bees have co-evolved alongside North America crops such as potatoes, squash, tomatoes, peppers, and cranberries, and native bees are thus more efficient pollinators of these crops: Native pollinators have been shown to improve pollination efficiency and increase fruit set by twice the amount as compared to honey bees in a wide variety of crops.[4]
Diverse stressors synergistically interact to cause this startling collapse in native bee pollinator populations. Stressors include monotonous floral resources, heavy pathogen and parasite loads, disruption of natural life-cycle patterns, climate change, invasive species, land-use change, and exposure to pesticides, particularly neonicotinoids, the most widely used class of neuro-active insecticides in the 21st century.[5] Since the mid-1990s, widespread adoption of neonicotinoids has transformed the agrochemical landscape for pollinators—the American landscape has become 48 times more toxic to pollinators since the 1990s, a shift largely fueled by rising neonicotinoid exposure (DiBartolomeis et al., 2019).[6] Due to their widespread distribution, systemic action, prolonged toxicity, and potential synergies, this class of insecticide poses a serious threat to pollinators.
Concern for pollinators is surging globally as reports continue to document their precipitous decline. Ambitious policy on the international, national, and subnational levels is urgently needed to address the complex socio-ecological issue of rapidly declining native pollinator diversity and abundance.[7] This proposal asserts that the U.S. federal government must rapidly deploy its resources at federal and state levels to address this crisis in native pollinator health. Expanding substantially upon the bill now in committee entitled ‘Saving America’s Pollinators Act of 2019’ (H.R. 1337, 116th Congress, 2019-2020), this proposal suggests that the federal government attaches trust status and protection to native pollinators since they are necessary, increasingly scarce, and irreplaceable. The trust bill would establish a new division of the USDA called the Pollinator Protection Agency (PPA). The undersecretary of this department would be the trustee for this public trust whose res consists of all U.S. native pollinators. The PPA would be delegated the authority to coordinate the pollinator protecting policies regulated by diverse agencies within the federal government including the USDA, EPA, DOI, FWS, and USGS. This trust would invoke many strategies to support pollinators, including but not limited to establishing pollinator friendly pesticide policy which will include a ban of neonicotinoids, incentivization and payment programs for establishing native pollinator habitat, competitive subsidies, research grants, monitoring programs, and all other relevant regulations necessary to meet the fiduciary obligation established by this trust.
In sum, this comprehensive and ambitious restructuring of native pollinator protection within a national trust would make explicit the federal government’s fiduciary obligation to protect native pollinator populations. By incorporating the precautionary principle and endorsing preventative measures, this trust will help ensure food security for future generations and promote intergeneration equity.
[1] Cardoso, P., Barton, P. S., Birkhofer, K., Chichorro, F., Deacon, C., Fartmann, T., Fukushima, C. S., Gaigher, R., Habel, J. C., Hallmann, C. A., Hill, M. J., Hochkirch, A., Kwak, M. L., Mammola, S., Ari Noriega, J., Orfinger, A. B., Pedraza, F., Pryke, J. S., Roque, F. O., Samways, M. J. (2020). Scientists’ warning to humanity on insect extinctions. Biological Conservation, 242, 108426.
Sanchez-Bayo, F., & Wyckhuys, K. A. G. (2019). Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers. Biological Conservation, 232, 8–27.
Wagner, D. L. (2020). Insect Declines in the Anthropocene. In A. E. Douglas (Ed.), Annual Review of Entomology, Vol 65 (Vol. 65, pp. 457–480). Annual Reviews.
[2] Marshman, J., Blay-Palmer, A., & Landman, K. (2019). Anthropocene Crisis: Climate Change, Pollinators, and Food Security. Environments, 6(2), 22.
[3] Potts, S. G., Biesmeijer, J. C., Kremen, C., Neumann, P., Schweiger, O., & Kunin, W. E. (2010). Global pollinator declines: Trends, impacts and drivers. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 25(6), 345–353.
[4] Garibaldi, L.A., Steffan-Dewenter, I., Winfree, R., Aizen, M.A., Bommarco, R., Cunningham, S.A., Kremen, C., Carvalheiro, L.G., Harder, L.D., Afik, O., et al. (2013). Wild Pollinators Enhance Fruit Set of Crops Regardless of Honey Bee Abundance. Science 339, 1608-1611.
[5] Goulson, D. (2013). An overview of the environmental risks posed by neonicotinoid insecticides. Journal of Applied Ecology, 50(4), 977–987. JSTOR.
Goulson, D., Nicholls, E., Botias, C., & Rotheray, E. L. (2015). Bee declines driven by combined stress from parasites, pesticides, and lack of flowers. Science, 347(6229), 1255957.
[6] DiBartolomeis, M., Kegley, S., Mineau, P., Radford, R., & Klein, K. (2019). An assessment of acute insecticide toxicity loading (AITL) of chemical pesticides used on agricultural land in the United States. PloS One, 14(8), e0220029.
Jeschke, P., Nauen, R., Schindler, M., & Elbert, A. (2011). Overview of the status and global strategy for neonicotinoids. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 59(7), 2897–2908.
[7] Hall, D. M., & Steiner, R. (2019). Insect pollinator conservation policy innovations: Lessons for lawmakers. Environmental Science & Policy, 93, 118–128.
Relevant Resources:
Ceres Trust https://cerestrust.org/pollinator-protection-and-proliferation/
Xerces Society https://www.xerces.org/
Pesticide Action Network http://www.panna.org/
Beyond Pesticides https://www.beyondpesticides.org/