Imagine
living in a world without bees. A world without flowers, fruit,
even a cup of coffee. A world, even, without chocolate!
Thanks to the
wonderful work
of bees, butterflies, birds, and other pollinating animals, the
world's flowering plants are able to reproduce and bear fruit, providing
many of the foods we eat, the plants we and other animals use, and
the beauty we see around us. Yet today, there is an alarming decline
in pollinator populations worldwide.
Domesticated
honeybees are not the only pollinators in trouble these days. Many
species of butterflies, moths, birds, bats and other mammals are
also in retreat, threatening not only commercial crops but a wide
range of flowering plants.
"Action
must be taken to reverse these trends," says Stephen Buchmann,
an entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Carl Hayden
Bee Research Center in Tucson, Arizona. According to Buchmann, only
a few of these pollinators (mainly Hawaiian bird species) are protected
by the federal Endangered Species Act. "This is simply because
the world is focused on the charismatic megafauna--the lions and
tigers and bears," he says. "The little things that run
the world, including bees, butterflies, bats and hummingbirds, go
unnoticed and unprotected until it is sometimes too late."
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Pollinator Declines
Migratory
Pollinators
A collaborative consortium among the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum,
Bat Conservation International, the Center for Plant Conservation,
the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the Native Plant Conservation
Initiative, the Turner Endangered Species Fund, and the Xerces Society,
the Migratory Pollinators project is a five-year effort to monitor
four migratory pollinator species along the nectar corridor of western
Mexico and the southwestern United States. The project combines
research and educational outreach to encourage stewardship among
local communities.
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