[Pollinator] Pollinators as Social and Ecological Capital in the Pollinator Capitol of America

[Jennifer Tsang]

Thanks to Laurie Davies Adams for sharing the below:

 

http://garynabhan.com/i/archives/1414

 

When most people think of the "birds and the bees," they are inevitably
thinking about relationships. romantic or otherwise. But what few
conservationist advocates remember is that their neighbors, friends and kin
who may be unschooled in the details of conservation biology almost
intuitively "get" that the conservation of relationships may be as necessary
as the conservation of species or of habitats. Most people will agree that
the relationships between pollen-carrying animals and plants are worthy of
our respect, protection and restoration, since they literally bring us our
daily breads, fruits and vegetables.

So what if you designed a participatory community-based conservation and
restoration initiative around pollinators, their habitats, and their
benefits to a local economy? It may seem far-fetched, but that is exactly
what is happening in the watersheds straddling the Arizona-Sonora border,
which is some of the richest real estate for native pollinators in all of
the Americas.



Heliconius Sara, just one of the butterfly species in Arizona.

The borderlands of Southeastern Arizona and adjacent Sonora are home to at
least 600 native bee species which live in the wilds of southern Arizona, as
well as 300 pollinating butterflies and moths, 15 hummingbird species, two
bats and several doves. That level of pollinator diversity may qualify this
landscape to be heralded as the "pollinator capitol of North America."
Ironically this semi-arid landscape is also one of the worst hit by the
arrival of Africanized bees and parasitic mites which have wrecked havoc
upon the honeybee economy. Throw in the effects of the sudden colony
collapse, and there may be fewer honeybees out pollinating flowers in this
region that at any time since the American Revolution.

And yet, another kind of revolution is now occurring in the borderlands
landscape; a deep-seated urge to restore broken relationships-between the
citizens of Mexico and those of the U.S., between ranchers and urban
environmentalists, between native and immigrants, and of course between
humankind and other-than-human species. Restoring plant-pollinator
relationships has become a tangible means of bringing people together from
diverse backgrounds, ethnicities, ideologies and livelihoods to heal
relationships at several levels all at once.

Coming together under the umbrella of the Borderlands Habitat Restoration
Initiative,  local citizens-from retired elders to the Girl Scouts-are
banding together to restore degraded lands and waters, improve wildlife
habitat for pollinators,and strengthen the local economy through celebrating
what is most unique about this place.

As BCRI founder and co-facilitator Ron Pulliam reminds us, "The borderland
between southern Arizona and northern Sonora is one of the most biologically
diverse temperate areas in the world. Its unusually high biological
diversity for any ecoregion on the continent is due to the confluence of
four great biogeographic domains- the Sonoran desert to the West, the
Chihuahuan desert to the East, the Sierra Madre to the South and the Rocky
Mountains to the North- and the intermingling of their unique floras and
faunas."

While much of the borderlands working landscapes appear to be intact, and
its flora and fauna attract millions of visitors each year, all that has
been changing rapidly. In just the past 50 years, human settlements have
grown from a few dusty border towns to several sprawling, rapidly growing
cities. The large human migration in history has been the post-World War II
translocation of Mexicans and Americans to the Sunbelt. Streams, rivers and
reservoirs have been gobbled up, and long meandering corridors of habitats
fragmented like the breaking-up of a necklace of pearls. And yet-for a brief
moment in time-the economic downturn has slowed the momentum of land
clearing and habitat fragmentation-and turned people's attention to the
possibility of a "restoration economy."



Patagonia, Az. - Photo taken by Tim Tracy

What if Patagonia, Arizona-already one of the most popular birding spots in
the West-actually proclaimed itself to be the Pollinator Capital of America,
and shifted its goals to model what a restoration economy can be? What if
its farmers, gardeners and orchard-keepers bolstered their fruit, nut and
berry yields by planting hedgerows of pollinator-attracting shrubs and
wildflowers around the edges of their crops? What if naturalists and birders
were invited to come to the town's "bird and breakfast" lodges, motels and
camp grounds to document the migrations of hummingbirds, bats and
butterflies in spring and fall, leaving their "citizen science" data behind
to be analyzed by school children and elderly volunteers? What if new
nurseries popped up that sold so many pollinator-attracting trees, shrubs
and wildflowers that the entire town became prime pollinator habitat once
more? Many Patagonians are already set on seeing their community integrate
many of the best practices for habitat restoration and pollinator recovery
so that birds, bees, butterflies, bats and people all benefit.

Already the Audubon Society, the Nature Conservancy and the Girl Scouts have
planted pollinator gardens in public places, including the town square.
Mexican biology students have visited and exchanged ideas with American
students. A coalition of farmers and orchard keepers have recently banded
together to submit an on-farm pollinator habitat project to the USDA, and
hundreds of townspeople participated in 2011 events such as a nectar plant
propagation workshop, hummingbird banding and monitoring expeditions and
"potting parties" for seedlings of hummingbird bushes. A speaker's series
and habitat restoration forum are planned for 2012.

We hope you will visit our community and participate in our restoration
projects. You will also be able to make a real contribution to wildlife and
to reconnecting people with land and wildlife while healing cultural
relationships in the borderlands as well..

And of the idea of "land health": seems to abstract to you, consider this:
The pollination services provided to food crops and rangeland forages by
bees and other animals is valued at no less than $15-20 billion a year in
the United States. It, like many other things we now find to be scarce, was
once provided to us "for free." But over the last five years, the costs for
Western orchardists renting honeybee colonies has tripled, so that the price
of renting and managing honeybees to pollinate a crop like almond trees is
now 15% of the entire annual cost of producing nuts. This has forced
farmers, orchard-keepers and ranchers to look for other pollinators to do
the "work" on their lands. Recent events suggest that if borderland dwellers
want to keep these valuable services available to us, our many cultures in
the region need to  invest in restoring imperiled relationships by providing
pollinators with food, sheltered nesting areas and pesticide-free habitat

 

Gary Paul Nabhan was co-author of The Forgotten Pollinators (with Stephen
Buchmann) and founder of the national campaign of the same name. He is
editor of the anthology,  Conserving Migratory Pollinators and Nectar
Corridors in North America, and author of the memoir of a literary
naturalist, Cross Pollinations. He was recently honored by Utne Reader as
one of 25 visionaries changing the world for the better in 2011.

 

 

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