Ladybird Johnson may have been onto something after all.
During the Johnson administration, the late first lady famously fought to replace billboards with wildflowers along the nation’s highways. While she was seeking to beautify America, her idea has returned, this time with the important economic goal of halting the decline of honeybees and other pollinators.
Pollination by honeybees alone added more than $3 billion in value to our state’s tree fruit and berry crops in 2012, according to a report to the Legislature by the state Department of Agriculture’s Honey Bee Work Group. But populations of honeybees and other pollinators have been in decline for decades, and that decline has accelerated in recent years. In the late 1940s, America’s crops were pollinated by more than 5.7 million bee colonies. That number has dropped to 2.7 million colonies among an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 beekeepers.
Beekeepers nationwide lost more than 40 percent of their colonies last year, though some of those were recovered by dividing hives. And the number of monarch butterflies, another significant pollinator, which winter in Mexico’s forests, is down by 90 percent over the past two decades.
A recently released report by a White House task force on the health of pollinators, blames a range of factors in the bees’ decline, including pests and disease, reduced habitat and lack of non-crop food sources and exposure to agricultural pesticides, including a class of pesticide called neonicotinoids.
To counter that decline, the task force’s report recommends work to improve habitat and expand forage areas for bees, increased public education to encourage the planting of pollinator gardens and further study of the reasons for the bees’ decline, the threat posed by neonicotinoids and effective regulatory response.
Planting wildflowers along highways and other open spaces may sound like a minor move, but bee researchers told the Associated Press that increasing habitat and forage areas for bees and other pollinators, such as monarch butterflies, is desperately needed by bees that have lost food sources to land now occupied by lawns and more than 80 million acres of corn planted nationwide. The report recommends restoring and enhancing 7 million acres of land over the next five years through federal action and public-private partnerships.
Some have been critical that the report does not seek more direct action against neonicotinoids, as has been the case in Europe, where their use has been temporarily suspended. The Environmental Protection Agency has halted approval for new uses of the pesticide until more study is complete. Toward that end, the Obama administration has proposed spending almost $48.5 million more than the current funding level of $34 million for research. If the decline of bees does not begin to show signs it will soon ease, the federal government also ought to consider a temporary ban.
Much of Washington state’s agricultural economy depends on the health of bees. Our state agencies should look for opportunities to join the federal government in expanding habitat, as can home gardeners by adding bee-friendly plants to their gardens.
Giving Ladybird her wildflowers only sweetens the deal.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
