[Pollinator] The day the bees died (Al Jazerra America)

[Matthew Shepherd]

From: Al Jazerra America

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/8/20/the-day-the-beesdied.html 


The day the bees died


by Elizabeth Grossman

August 20, 2013 5:00AM ET 

Neonicotinoids, the world's most widely used pesticides, appear to be
killing bees

							

In mid-June, some 50,000 bees were found dead in a suburban shopping-center
parking lot in Wilsonville, Ore. - the largest mass bumblebee die-off ever
recorded. The culprit: a pesticide called Safari that was sprayed onto the
blooming linden trees that line the parking lot to control aphids, which
secrete a sticky residue that can be a nuisance when it falls on cars.
Safari's primary ingredient is dinetofuran, a compound that belongs to a
class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, which appear to contribute to
the ongoing decline of North American and European bee populations.

In response to the Wilsonville bee die-off - and another a few days later in
Hillsboro, a nearby suburb, involving hundreds of bees and the same
pesticide - the Oregon Department of Agriculture issued a 180-day moratorium
on dinetofuran products used for plant pest control. Federal legislation
introduced in July, the Protecting America's Pollinators Act (H.R. 2692),
would go further by effectively banning neonicotinoid use until research has
determined that these pesticides are not harmful to bees. This restriction
would be similar to the two-year ban the European Union issued in April for
three widely used neonicotinoids.

A month after the dead bees were discovered in Wilsonville, 37 million bees
were found dead in Ontario. One local beekeeper, who said he lost 600 hives,
blamed the heavy use of neonicotinoids on nearby cornfields. Over the past
10 years or so, bee populations have been declining dramatically, with
commercial beekeepers experiencing annual hive losses of 30 to 50 percent
and sometimes more. Given that the majority of the world's 100 most
important food crops, or one in every three bites of food worldwide, depend
on insect pollination, the ongoing and steep decline in bees is of great
concern. While neonicotinoids are not considered the sole contributor to bee
populations' collapse - diseases and parasites are also factors - many
scientists think the pesticides contribute to losses by impairing bees'
ability to feed and by weakening their immune systems.

Introduced in the 1990s and welcomed as safer alternatives to previous
pesticide classes, a number of neonicotinoids were rapidly approved by the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). They are now the world's most
widely used pesticides. There are dozens of neonicotinoid pesticide
products, including home-garden products, manufactured and sold by numerous
companies. Neonicotinoids are used on approximately 75 percent of all acres
planted with food crops in the United States, on 95 percent of all U.S. corn
and widely on landscaping plants.

Considered less toxic to mammals (including humans) than some other types of
widely used pesticides, neonicotinoids work by attacking insects' nervous
systems. They also differ from many other pesticides in that they are often
used as systemic pesticides, applied to seeds or directly into tree trunks
and then staying with the plant as it grows, including when it blooms. That
means the pesticides are present in the pollen and nectar on which bees and
other pollinators feed. Several recent studies by scientists at Purdue
University, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station and the
University of Stirling in Scotland, among others, have found neonicotinoids
in pollen at levels that can harm bees after the pesticides were used as
directed by manufacturers. There is concern that exposure is also harmful to
birds that feed on treated plants.

The problem, according to Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces
Society, a nonprofit dedicated to invertebrate conservation, is that, used
as directed - at levels that kill target pests - the neonicotinoids are
harming bees. "This is what happened in Hillsboro," said Black. "The
pesticide was used as directed." But CropLife America, a trade association
representing pesticide manufacturers, says that "when used properly and
according to the label, there has been no demonstrated extraordinary
negative effect on bee health associated with the use of neonicotinoid-based
pesticides."

According to a report
<http://libcloud.s3.amazonaws.com/93/99/a/3124/FOE_Bee_Report_08b.pdf>
just released by Friends of the Earth and the Pesticide Research Institute,
the majority of plants purchased at U.S. home-garden centers contained
neonicotinoids. The plants chosen for testing were those described as
bee-friendly because of their blooms known to attract bees. On Aug. 14,
authors of the report sent a petition with more than 175,000 signatures to
retailers asking them to stop selling neonicotinoids and plants treated with
these pesticides.

  _____  

Most independent scientists think we've already reached a point of urgency.
- Scott Black, Xerces Society

  _____  

On Aug. 15, the EPA announced new neonicotinoid labeling requirements, which
the agency believes will help curtail their use in places where bees are
present. The new labels, due to appear on products in 2014, will have a bee
advisory box and icon and information about exposure routes and other
precautions. This is just one part of the agency's efforts to address
pollinator health, an EPA spokesperson explained via email. It is in the
process of reviewing several neonicotinoid registrations, a process
scheduled to be completed in 2018, and says that it "will take appropriate
regulatory action," depending on the outcome of those studies.

Pesticide Action Network North America spokesman Paul Towers said the new
labels "would do little to address the problem of bee declines" and called
on the EPA to "act on the growing body of scientific evidence and further
restrict use of neonicotinoids." He said "there is no way to effectively
mitigate a pesticide which is systemic and persistent in a plant," even with
additional labeling guidelines. The labels will do little to help native
bees, Black said. "Most independent scientists think we've already reached a
point of urgency. The last decade of data points to that."

"The trajectory for damage to pollinator populations, particularly
honeybees, has been really troubling," said Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., a
lead sponsor of H.R. 2692, in a phone interview. Despite public concern
about bees, he said he was not optimistic about the prospects for the
pollinator-protection bill's passage. He did, however, see "a real
opportunity" that pollinator protection would be included in the Farm Bill,
the large agricultural-policy bill passed every five years that Congress is
expected to take up again when it convenes after Labor Day. An amendment
addressing pollinator protection was attached to the House bill in June and
passed with bipartisan support. A similar amendment was introduced in the
Senate but was not voted on before it passed its version of the bill.

In March, four beekeepers and five environmental and consumer groups filed
suit against the EPA, claiming that it ignored scientific information about
neonicotinoids' toxicity to bees when it approved the category of
pesticides, including neonicotinoid products approved through an expedited
process called "conditional registration." In July, another suit was filed
against the EPA over its approval of a new insect neurotoxicant pesticide
without evidence that it won't harm bees. The beekeepers and environmental
advocates contend that the EPA has not paid sufficient attention to the
pesticides' potential adverse long-term or sublethal effects on bees or to
the chemicals' effects on bees in combination with other stressors, such as
disease, parasites, and habitat loss.

Meanwhile, the EPA has issued new guidelines for investigating bee kills and
is working with beekeepers, pesticide manufacturers and applicators, seed
companies and farmers to better protect pollinators. But environmental
advocates do not want to keep neonicotinoids on the market while further
research is conducted and want their use halted.

"We need to be concerned about short-term activities, but it is the long
term we're concerned with," said Blumenauer. The pollinator-protection bill,
he said, is but "a very limited response to a potentially very big problem."


 

 

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