Free to Bee You and Me

No joke — this week is Pollinator Protection Week. Events are taking place across the United States to show how bees and other pollinators are important to humankind, as well as to spotlight the risks to their survival. Wild bee hives are in particular decline from the spraying of pesticides, for example. Experts say that the United States has lost 90 percent of its hives, and that the country now has to import almost half the honey it consumes. In the past 20 years, in general, all pollinators — which in addition to bees includes other insects like butterflies and birds like the hummingbird — are in decline in so-called developed nations because of habitat loss.

Pollinators are indeed very important. One-third of the food we eat comes from pollinated plants. Some medicines, drinks, and fibers also depend on the ecosystem services provided by pollinators.

Pollination Guelph, a citizens group in Guelph, Canada, a city just west of Toronto, Ontario, has hit on a beautiful idea. The group is helping convert 111 acres above a former former trash dump into what's being billed as the “world’s first pollinator park.” They are raising money to get an environmental restoration project underway that would include the introduction of pollinator-friendly native plants, demonstration gardens, and hiking trails with nature interpretation projects.