Plan makes millions of acres of federal land more bee-friendly but does not ban the use of neonicotinoids which research shows are closely linked to bee life loss

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The White House has announced an ambitious plan to “promote the health of honeybees and other pollinators” in the United States in a bid to help reverse a worrying trend that has seen the honeybee population fall by half over the last seven decades.

It includes making millions of acres of federal land more bee-friendly, an explicit ambition to increase the population of the monarch butterfly, and the provision of millions of dollars to be spent on research.

Beekeepers see 42% of US honeybee colonies die off in a single year Read more

But the plan announced on Tuesday falls short in one capacity that has environmental groups up in arms. It does not ban the use of any form of toxic pesticides, despite a large body of scientific research showing many of them – specifically neonicotinoids, or “neonics” – to be closely linked to widespread bee life loss.

“President Obama’s National Pollinator Health Strategy misses the mark by not adequately addressing the pesticides as a key driver of unsustainable losses of bees and other pollinators essential to our food system,” said Lisa Archer, food and technology program director with Friends of the Earth.

Fran Teplitz, executive co-director of Green America, talked with a sense of urgency about the need to make plans with “all due speed” to ensure pesticides linked to the demise of pollinators be taken out of the marketplace.

Last year, research emerged from Harvard University showing that when colonies of honeybees were exposed to neonicotinoids, the most widely used insecticide around the world, half of them died.

A recent study published in Environmental Science and Technology suggested pesticide prevalence, specifically of the neonicotinoid kind, had been grossly underestimated because previous counts (including those undertaken by governmental agencies) failed to include seed treatment – a new prophylactic method introduced at the beginning of last decade that ensures seeds are sprayed before they are even planted.

At least 79% of American maize fields have been planted with preemptively treated seeds, the study found.

Traditional farmers who are conscious to the survival of bees and who want to avoid neonics are finding it difficult to obtain uncoated seeds in the marketplace, Tiffany Finck-Haynes, a food futures campaigner with Friends of the Earth, said.

In 2013, the European Union placed a temporary moratorium on the use of neonicotinoids on crops.

Honeybees, both domestic and wild, are responsible for 80% of the world’s pollination, a Greenpeace report stated.

A third of what we eat on our plate would disappear without bees, today’s federal government plan said.

The massive decline in bee population is the subject of broad ongoing academic and scientific research. Two of the most commonly used reasons for the mass decline are loss of habitat, which today’s plan expressly addresses, and widespread use of toxic pesticides, which it does to a far lesser degree.

Reacting to the news, the Associated Press reported that CropLife America, a trade association representing the pesticide industry, had praised the strategy for its “multi-pronged coordinated approach”.

For Finck-Haynes, a declining bee population is bad news. “They are the canary in the coal mine for our food system,” she said. “They indicate what is happening more broadly in our ecosystem.”