[Pollinator] Pollinators win big in NRCS Conservation Innovation Grants

[Scott Black]

[]


Pollinators win big in NRCS Conservation 
Innovation Grants: The Xerces Society receives 
$458,000; Pollinator Partnership receives 
$183,954; and Gold Ridge Resource Conservation District receives $71,500.

Xerces Society and multiple partners will work to 
understand and protect habitat for pollinators 
and other beneficial insects. Pollinator 
Partnership and Gold Ridge RCD aim to develop 
habitat plans to support pollinators.

Portland, OR – Pollinators are essential to our 
environment. The ecological service they provide 
is necessary for the reproduction of nearly 70 
percent of the world’s flowering plants. This 
includes more than two-thirds of the world’s crop 
species, whose fruits and seeds together provide 
over 30 percent of the foods and beverages that 
we consume. The United States alone grows more 
than one hundred crops that either need or 
benefit from pollinators. The economic value of 
insect-pollinated crops in the United States was 
estimated to be $18.9 billion in 2000. Native 
insects are responsible for pollinating at least 
$3 billion worth of these crops.

Native pollinators across the United States are 
in decline, especially in heavily managed 
landscapes. Managed pollinators, including honey 
bees, are in need of increased pollen diversity 
to help bolster their resistance to disease, 
pesticides, and other stresses. The 2008 Farm 
Bill explicitly establishes pollinators as a priority resource concern.

In response to this concern the Natural Resource 
Conservation Service has awarded two grants to 
the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation.

Xerces Society Grants
$255,312 to Develop and Test Pollinator Habitat 
Job Sheets for Six Regions of the U.S.
Providing additional forage and refuge through 
on-farm natural habitat is widely recog­nized as 
important for enhancing pollinator health, 
diversity and abundance. Creating these habitat 
enhancements through the planting of adjacent 
pollinator meadows, bee pastures, or flowering 
hedgerows, however is not simply a matter of 
selecting regionally appropriate wildflowers. 
Rather these plantings need to be tailored to the 
specific cropping systems and include plants of 
greatest benefit to bees. For example, adjacent 
pollinator plantings need to be screened for 
appropriate bloom time, ensuring that floral 
competition does not exist with the primary crop. 
Similarly, these pollinator plantings need to be 
composed of species that will not become weeds in 
the primary crop, and they should not serve as 
alternate hosts of crop pests and diseases.

The Xerces Society will work with regional 
partners to standardize pollinator seed mixes and 
habitat specifications for different agricultural 
industries and landscapes. Partners include the 
California Association of Conservation Districts, 
Oregon State University, the University of 
Wisconsin Center for Integrated Agricultural 
Systems and UW Department of Entomology, 
Pennsylvania State University, the Cape Cod 
Cranberry Growers Association and Plymouth 
Massachusetts Soil and Water Conservation 
District, and Straughn Farms of Waldo Florida.

“These plantings provide a win-win scenario, 
creating new opportunities for beneficial 
wildlife in agricultural settings,” said Mace 
Vaughan Pollinator Program Director for the 
Xerces Society.  “It will also provide direct 
economic benefits to farmers resulting from 
increased crop pollination and healthier honey bee colonies.”

Also, critical to this project’s success are the 
USDA NRCS Plant Material Centers (PMCs). Plant 
Material Centers play a vital role in helping the 
NRCS complete its mission of natural resource 
conservation. Six of the nation’s 27 NRCS PMCs 
will help plant pollinator habitat as part of this project.

$202,631 to Promote Agricultural Sustainability 
through Conserving Beneficial Insects: Restoring 
Pollination and Pest Control Services on Farms in 
California's Central Valley, Phase II

In 2006, the Xerces Society, University of 
California at Berkeley, the Audubon California 
Land Owner Stewardship Program, and the Center 
for Land Based Learning initiated our Restoring 
Pollination Function on Farms in California’s 
Central Valley project (with partial funding from 
a CA CIG grant and an NRCS Fish and Wildlife grant).

In Phase I of this project, we worked with six 
farms to plant buffers with pollinator habitat. 
We monitored bee communities before and after 
restoration at these sites and at twelve control 
sites. We presented dozens of workshops across 
California and developed a variety of NRCS 
publications that provide the technical 
information and specifications needed to 
implement pollinator habitat using NRCS 
Conservation Practices. We also developed a 
citizen science bee monitoring protocol for California’s Central Valley.

Capitalizing on these successes, the UC Berkeley 
and the Xerces Society will expand this project 
to demonstrate how effectively these hedgerows 
recruit natural enemies of crop pests.  We will 
use this information to develop guidelines for 
beneficial insect habitat and engage growers and 
NRCS staff through workshops across the state.

“If we hope to conserve biological diversity we 
must work within agricultural landscapes,” said 
Scott Hoffman Black, Executive Director of the 
Xerces Society. “Both of these projects will 
provide vital information that will allow us 
provide habitat for pollinators and other 
beneficial insects which in turn will provide 
benefits for a broad variety of birds, fish and other animals.”

The NRCS also awarded grants to the Pollinator 
Partnership to work with partners to develop 
pollinator project specifications for Montana, 
Ohio and Arizona, as well as to the Gold Ridge 
Conservation District of Occidental, California 
for a pilot project to enhance pollinator habitat 
on six farms in California’s Sonoma County.





*************************
Scott Hoffman Black
Ecologist/Entomologist
Executive Director
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
4828 SE Hawthorne
Portland, OR 97215
Direct line (503) 449-3792
sblack at xerces.org

The Xerces Society is an international, nonprofit 
organization that protects wildlife through the 
conservation of invertebrates and their habitat.

To join the Society, make a contribution, or read about our work,
please visit <http://www.xerces.org/>www.xerces.org.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sonic.net/pipermail/pollinator/attachments/20090714/ffa5c1c4/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: clip_image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 18953 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.sonic.net/pipermail/pollinator/attachments/20090714/ffa5c1c4/attachment-0001.jpg>