[Pollinator] native flower compensation areas and mango pollination

[Bonnie Harper-Lore]

Highway rights-of-way total 17 million acres of conservation opportunity.
Until 2009 when I retired from the Federal Highway Administration/FHWA-USDOT (who oversees State, County and Interstate use of gas taxes),
we advocated for the planting of new and preserving of existing remnant native plant areas throughout those corridors.
It is a win--win for all concerned.  Ultimately each State Department of Transportation makes their own decision
on how to manage those roadsides.  They only change their practices, if you, the public ask them to.
So please ask and you will have more than just patches of pollinator habitat, you will have corridors of habitat
that connect to public and private lands throughout the nation.  Midwestern States are already having pollinator success stories on their highways.
Bonnie Harper-Lore

On Dec 5, 2012, at 9:45 AM, Richard Johnstone wrote:

> Thus the reason IVM Partners has been educating electric and gas utilities of the need to "manage" vegetation on their rights-of-way corridors to naturally provide for native wildflowers and shrubs that provide pollinator food and shelter, and access and reliability concerns of energy providers.  Energy ROW crisscross all farmlands and can meet the pollinator needs without removing valuable cropland out of production.
> Rick Johnstone
> 
> 
> On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 8:55 PM, David Inouye <inouye at umd.edu> wrote:
> Carvalheiro, L. G., C. L. Seymour, et al. (2012). "Creating patches of native flowers facilitates crop pollination in large agricultural fields: mango as a case study." Journal of Applied Ecology 49(6): 1373-1383.
>         * As cropland increases, fields become progressively isolated from pollinators, leading to declines in pollinator-dependent crop productivity. With the rise in demand for pollinator-dependent foods, such productivity losses may accelerate conversion of natural areas to cropland. Pollination easures involving managed pollinators or hand pollination are not always optimal or are too costly. Introducing areas of native vegetation within cropland has been proposed as a way to supplement crop pollinators, but this measure is perceived by farmers to carry costs outweighing benefits to agricultural production. Studies quantifying benefits of small patches of native flowers to crop pollination are therefore necessary to encourage such practices. 
> * To ascertain whether provision of floral resources within farmlands can facilitate pollination, and hence, crop yields, small experimental patches of perennial native plants (native flower compensation areas, NFCAs) were created in nonproductive areas of large commercial fields of several cultivars of mango Mangifera indica. 
> * Pesticide use and isolation from natural habitat were associated with declines in flying visitors and in mango production (kg of marketable fresh fruit), but presence of NFCAs ameliorated these declines, and NFCAs did not harbour any mango pests. In areas far from natural vegetation, orchards near NFCAs had significantly higher diversity and abundance of mango flying visitors, as well as mango production, than orchards far from NFCAs, although these measures were still lower than in orchards close to natural areas. 
> * Neither the most abundant flower visitors to mango (ants) nor initial fruit set was significantly affected by distance, pesticides or NFCAs, suggesting that although fertilization is associated with factors unaffected by isolation from natural habitat and pesticide use (i.e. self- and ant-pollination), viable fruit set (and ultimately, production) requires cross-pollination, for which flying visitors are essential. 
> * Synthesis and applications. Our results show that the presence of small patches of native flowers within large farms can increase pollinator-dependent crop production if combined with preservation of remaining fragments of natural habitat and judicious use of pesticides. Native flower compensation areas represent a profitable management measure for farmers, increasing cost-effectiveness of cropland while indirectly contributing to preservation of natural habitat.
> 
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