Is Wisconsin Doing Enough to Protect the Pollinator Population?
History
Pollinators like bees, pollen wasps, ants, flies, lepidopterans, flower beetles and vertebrates are an important key to our ecosystem service and helping us since we settled the world. Some examples pollinators were used for are: nutrition, health, medicine, cosmetics, religion and cultural identity. The animal world and humans are reliant on them. For a nutrition source like honey, pollen, wax, propolis, resin, royal jelly, bee venom and enabling the fertilization of plants who produce the fruits, seeds and food. At least 80% of our world's crop species require pollination to set seed and they contributed 24 billion dollars in the last few years to the U.S economy.
For a few years, in Wisconsin there were more than 500 species of wild bees. It was unimaginable how many pollinator species there were. In 1977, the honey bee became the state insect of Wisconsin. And in 2008 pollinators got the Agricultural law to protect the pollinators and to research them. Also, in 2009, the Wisconsin department of natural resources added a few pollinators, like the bumblebee, to the special concern species list. However, Wisconsin pollinator populations have been declining for years. Land use changed (such as habitat loss, fragmentation, conversion, agricultural intensification, abandonment, and urbanization), pollution, pesticides, pathogens, climate change and competing alien species are direct anthropogenic drivers that threaten pollinator populations.
More than 60 percent of the Wisconsin honeybee colonies died in 2015; it was one of the worst death rates in the country. That’s why the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection released a plan to help pollinators. “The Wisconsin Pollinator Protection Plan” was made to save bees, but it only provides little protection from pesticides. Unfortunately, this plan has never been translated into reality.
Current Status of Controversy
Despite the unrealized plan, people have begun to support pollinators. Farmers champion them by increasing natural growth of trees, shrubs and herbs. Some farms like the Harriet Behar’s farm give them backup sources/fields as a sanctuary and to rebuild the strength of the colonies. They also allowed field biologists to research their frequency and spread. Many companies and organizations started to support pollinators too. One company would be the USDA Ag Research Service Bee Research Program. They do inspections and supervisions of populations. But it is still not enough to protect them and not only the land changed and set them in danger.
Also, a senior at Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA, designed a bee drone last year. It is a personal robotic bee created to mimic how bees pollinate flowers and crops. Similar to how bees transfer pollen from one flower to another, the drone sucks in pollen from a plant and expels it onto other flowers to enable cross-pollination. She wants it to be an educational tool and a few people mean it could serve an even bigger purpose than a normal pollinator. This sets pollinators in even more danger. The population could say that pollinators are now unnecessary and they don’t care about them anymore. With this replacement robot bee, our bees will become useless and their colonies will die at an even more rapid pace.
It doesn’t look good for pollinators, but there are still people who want to help them. Overall, our pollinators are better than any fake robot bee.
Power Dynamic
This controversy has many power dynamics, but the strongest ones would have to be the farmers. The farmers are the ones with the ability to have the most impact, but refuse. Due to all the regulations given being only voluntary, they will not spend extra money if they don't have to. According to Paul Mitchell, a UW-Madison associate professor, nearly all the farmers in wisconsin use an absurd amount of pesticides for the amount of crops they have. This can cause butterflies, bees, and other pollinators, that help crops grow, to die. It has also been shown that using a proper amount of pesticide has little to no effect on the pollinator population. Even with this information given, plus the fact that pollinators would help crops grow, farmers still refuse to help without compensation. They discuss the ideas of compensation but over all have not found a solution for it. Another reason for the policies not taking place, would be that it takes time and money for the policies to actually go through the Wisconsin Government. It has proven to be more time consuming and more expensive than previously expected by certain groups of people.
Ethical Issue
The greatest issue about Wisconsin protecting the pollinator population, is the fact that every regulation put into place to protect them are only voluntary. No one is required to make butterfly sanctuaries and nobody is required to use the proper amount of pesticide at any given time. How all these sanctuaries and regulations would be put into place is
also a major concern for the farmers and large corporations. Brian Kuhn, Director of the plant industry Bureau, has encouraged farmers to partake in these suggestions. Research has shown that pollinators will only help their crops and the environment surrounding them. But without any compensation for using land, or the expenses it would take to help the pollinators thrive, farmers refuse to do anything. This issue is controversial due to it being time consuming and taking money to compensate farmers and to convince people to do these things. According to Paul Mitchell, a professor at UW Madison, a herbicide company wants to work with farmers to help create pollinator sanctuaries, but before any development is done they want to figure out what farmers are interested in doing. Many people wish to help pollinators, but lack the knowledge, equipment, or money to help. Unfortunately, some others refuse to help at all due to the loss they would get over it.
Key Players List
Some farmers and gardeners push the use of pesticides and neonicotinoids. They claim that these chemicals aren't hurting bees and other pollinators as much as it's said to. They continue to use a large amount of these chemicals that the pollinators ingest, causing brain malfunctions and incredible amounts of death in colonies, causing them to
collapse. Environmentalist groups, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and groups against pesticide use advocate for these chemicals to be banned in the United States all together, as they already have in the United Kingdom. They believe that the bad effects on the pollinators outweigh the good things and growth it does for farmers crops and plants. In order to raise the bee and pollinator populations, a heavily regulated use, or ban on the use of neonicotinoids and pesticides altogether, must be set in place and enforced properly, instead of just voluntary.
Sources
“Home.” Gratton Lab, gratton.entomology.wisc.edu/pollinator-resources/.
Johnson, Elizabeth. “Major Threats to Pollinators.” Great Pollinator Project, 15 Apr. 2014, greatpollinatorproject.org/conservation/major-threats-to-pollinators.
Pollinator Conservation in Minnesota and Wisconsin. 2011,
Potts, Simon G, et al., editors. Pollinators, Pollination, and Food Production.
The Associated Press. “UN Science Report Warns of Fewer Bees, Other Pollinators.”CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 26 Feb. 2016,
www.cbc.ca/news/technology/pollinators-un-report-1.3465373.
Stentz, Molly. “The mystery of dying bees: Madison beekeepers, UW researchers look for answers.” Isthmus | Madison, Wisconsin, 13 June 2013,
isthmus.com/news/news/the-mystery-of-dying-bees-madison-beekeepers-uw-researcher
s-look-for-answers/.
Sperling , David L. “What's the Buzz about Bees?” Wisconsin Natural Resources, June 2009,
dnr.wi.gov/wnrmag/2009/06/bees.htm.
“This “bee” drone is a robotic flower pollinator.” Fox6now, CNN Wire Service, 15 Feb. 2017
History
Pollinators like bees, pollen wasps, ants, flies, lepidopterans, flower beetles and vertebrates are an important key to our ecosystem service and helping us since we settled the world. Some examples pollinators were used for are: nutrition, health, medicine, cosmetics, religion and cultural identity. The animal world and humans are reliant on them. For a nutrition source like honey, pollen, wax, propolis, resin, royal jelly, bee venom and enabling the fertilization of plants who produce the fruits, seeds and food. At least 80% of our world's crop species require pollination to set seed and they contributed 24 billion dollars in the last few years to the U.S economy.
For a few years, in Wisconsin there were more than 500 species of wild bees. It was unimaginable how many pollinator species there were. In 1977, the honey bee became the state insect of Wisconsin. And in 2008 pollinators got the Agricultural law to protect the pollinators and to research them. Also, in 2009, the Wisconsin department of natural resources added a few pollinators, like the bumblebee, to the special concern species list. However, Wisconsin pollinator populations have been declining for years. Land use changed (such as habitat loss, fragmentation, conversion, agricultural intensification, abandonment, and urbanization), pollution, pesticides, pathogens, climate change and competing alien species are direct anthropogenic drivers that threaten pollinator populations.
More than 60 percent of the Wisconsin honeybee colonies died in 2015; it was one of the worst death rates in the country. That’s why the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection released a plan to help pollinators. “The Wisconsin Pollinator Protection Plan” was made to save bees, but it only provides little protection from pesticides. Unfortunately, this plan has never been translated into reality.
Current Status of Controversy
Despite the unrealized plan, people have begun to support pollinators. Farmers champion them by increasing natural growth of trees, shrubs and herbs. Some farms like the Harriet Behar’s farm give them backup sources/fields as a sanctuary and to rebuild the strength of the colonies. They also allowed field biologists to research their frequency and spread. Many companies and organizations started to support pollinators too. One company would be the USDA Ag Research Service Bee Research Program. They do inspections and supervisions of populations. But it is still not enough to protect them and not only the land changed and set them in danger.
Also, a senior at Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA, designed a bee drone last year. It is a personal robotic bee created to mimic how bees pollinate flowers and crops. Similar to how bees transfer pollen from one flower to another, the drone sucks in pollen from a plant and expels it onto other flowers to enable cross-pollination. She wants it to be an educational tool and a few people mean it could serve an even bigger purpose than a normal pollinator. This sets pollinators in even more danger. The population could say that pollinators are now unnecessary and they don’t care about them anymore. With this replacement robot bee, our bees will become useless and their colonies will die at an even more rapid pace.
It doesn’t look good for pollinators, but there are still people who want to help them. Overall, our pollinators are better than any fake robot bee.
Power Dynamic
This controversy has many power dynamics, but the strongest ones would have to be the farmers. The farmers are the ones with the ability to have the most impact, but refuse. Due to all the regulations given being only voluntary, they will not spend extra money if they don't have to. According to Paul Mitchell, a UW-Madison associate professor, nearly all the farmers in wisconsin use an absurd amount of pesticides for the amount of crops they have. This can cause butterflies, bees, and other pollinators, that help crops grow, to die. It has also been shown that using a proper amount of pesticide has little to no effect on the pollinator population. Even with this information given, plus the fact that pollinators would help crops grow, farmers still refuse to help without compensation. They discuss the ideas of compensation but over all have not found a solution for it. Another reason for the policies not taking place, would be that it takes time and money for the policies to actually go through the Wisconsin Government. It has proven to be more time consuming and more expensive than previously expected by certain groups of people.
Ethical Issue
The greatest issue about Wisconsin protecting the pollinator population, is the fact that every regulation put into place to protect them are only voluntary. No one is required to make butterfly sanctuaries and nobody is required to use the proper amount of pesticide at any given time. How all these sanctuaries and regulations would be put into place is
also a major concern for the farmers and large corporations. Brian Kuhn, Director of the plant industry Bureau, has encouraged farmers to partake in these suggestions. Research has shown that pollinators will only help their crops and the environment surrounding them. But without any compensation for using land, or the expenses it would take to help the pollinators thrive, farmers refuse to do anything. This issue is controversial due to it being time consuming and taking money to compensate farmers and to convince people to do these things. According to Paul Mitchell, a professor at UW Madison, a herbicide company wants to work with farmers to help create pollinator sanctuaries, but before any development is done they want to figure out what farmers are interested in doing. Many people wish to help pollinators, but lack the knowledge, equipment, or money to help. Unfortunately, some others refuse to help at all due to the loss they would get over it.
Key Players List
Some farmers and gardeners push the use of pesticides and neonicotinoids. They claim that these chemicals aren't hurting bees and other pollinators as much as it's said to. They continue to use a large amount of these chemicals that the pollinators ingest, causing brain malfunctions and incredible amounts of death in colonies, causing them to
collapse. Environmentalist groups, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and groups against pesticide use advocate for these chemicals to be banned in the United States all together, as they already have in the United Kingdom. They believe that the bad effects on the pollinators outweigh the good things and growth it does for farmers crops and plants. In order to raise the bee and pollinator populations, a heavily regulated use, or ban on the use of neonicotinoids and pesticides altogether, must be set in place and enforced properly, instead of just voluntary.
Sources
“Home.” Gratton Lab, gratton.entomology.wisc.edu/pollinator-resources/.
Johnson, Elizabeth. “Major Threats to Pollinators.” Great Pollinator Project, 15 Apr. 2014, greatpollinatorproject.org/conservation/major-threats-to-pollinators.
Pollinator Conservation in Minnesota and Wisconsin. 2011,
Potts, Simon G, et al., editors. Pollinators, Pollination, and Food Production.
The Associated Press. “UN Science Report Warns of Fewer Bees, Other Pollinators.”CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 26 Feb. 2016,
www.cbc.ca/news/technology/pollinators-un-report-1.3465373.
Stentz, Molly. “The mystery of dying bees: Madison beekeepers, UW researchers look for answers.” Isthmus | Madison, Wisconsin, 13 June 2013,
isthmus.com/news/news/the-mystery-of-dying-bees-madison-beekeepers-uw-researcher
s-look-for-answers/.
Sperling , David L. “What's the Buzz about Bees?” Wisconsin Natural Resources, June 2009,
dnr.wi.gov/wnrmag/2009/06/bees.htm.
“This “bee” drone is a robotic flower pollinator.” Fox6now, CNN Wire Service, 15 Feb. 2017