[Pollinator] The Xerces Society Releases New Guidelines for Pollinators and Roadsides

[Matthew Shepherd]

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POLLINATORS AND ROADSIDES

New guidelines can help highway departments, county road

managers, and others provide habitat for pollinators.


<http://www.xerces.org/press-releases/Drag%20to%20a%20file%20to%20make%20a%20link.>The
Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is pleased to announce the
release of *Pollinators and Roadsides: Managing Roadsides for Bees and
Butterflies <http://www.xerces.org/pollinator-conservation-roadsides/>*.
These guidelines provide a concise overview of the conservation potential of
roadside habitat and offer practical information on how to maximize the
value of these areas for pollinators while meeting basic traffic safety
requirements.

With more than 10 million acres of land in roadsides in the United States
alone, transportation rights-of-way are a significant, yet often overlooked,
resource for pollinator conservation. In landscapes denuded of natural areas
by large scale agriculture or urbanization, roadsides are an increasingly
important component of regional habitat networks. They frequently support
native vegetation, providing refuge for wildlife and connecting fragmented
habitat. The wildlife living on roadsides touches communities in every
state, province, and county of North America.

*Pollinators and Roadsides*, synthesizes the previous study of native bees
in roadside rights-of-way conducted by Jennifer Hopwood, the Xerces
Society’s Midwest pollinator outreach coordinator. Jennifer’s research
demonstrated that bees were twice as abundant on roadsides with native
prairie vegetation than on those dominated by nonnative plants, and that
native roadsides supported a third more bee species than roadsides with
nonnative plants.

These findings are reinforced by studies from North America and Europe that
consistently show that roadsides have a role to play in conserving bees,
butterflies, and other pollinating insects. *Pollinators and
Roadsides*draws on these studies, as well as the experience of
roadside managers, to
identify ways in which current maintenance practices can be adapted to
benefit pollinators.

*Pollinators and Roadsides* is available from the Xerces Society's website,
www.xerces.org.

Funding for these guidelines comes from The Ceres Foundation, CS Fund,
Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund, Natural Resources Foundation of
Wisconsin, Turner Foundation, and The Wildwood Foundation.



ABOUT THE XERCES SOCIETY

The Xerces Society is a nonprofit organization that protects wildlife
through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitat. Established in
1971, the Society is at the forefront of invertebrate protection worldwide,
harnessing the knowledge of scientists and the enthusiasm of citizens to
implement conservation programs. To learn more about our work, please visit
www.xerces.org.

 PHOTO CREDIT

Prairie clover blooming in a roadside in Iowa, by Kirk Henderson.

The Xerces Society • 4828 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Portland, Oregon 97215 USA •
tel 503.232.6639

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Copyright (C) 2010 The Xerces Society. All rights reserved.
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