[Pollinator] Protecting Pollinators One Community at a Time

[Matthew Shepherd]

Hi everyone,



Many communities across the U.S. are considering ways to protect
pollinators by reducing pesticide use. Almost always, these changes come
about thanks to local residents speaking up and working with their city
council to establish a new policy. We’ve been asked many times for
assistance with developing such policies and have drafted a model that can
be adapted to local needs.



Here’s an article just published on the Xerces blog by Aimee Code and Sarah
Hoyle about ways to reduce reliance on insecticides in public spaces.



You can read the text of our model policy or download it as a Word doc for
your own use at http://xerces.org/pesticide-local-policy/.



Thank you for everything that you all do to raise awareness and bring
change for pollinators!



Matthew





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https://xerces.org/2017/06/22/protecting-pollinators-one-community-at-a-time/



*Protecting Pollinators One Community at a Time*

By Aimee Code (Pesticide Program Director) and Sarah Hoyle (Pesticide
Program Specialist)





Pollinator week provides a time for us all to reflect on how we can help
restore the amazing and diverse pollinator species so inextricably linked
to our survival. While the task of bringing back the pollinators can seem
daunting, if we focus on our own communities, we really can make a
difference. We’ve provided ideas and encouragement for furthering
invertebrate conservation in your backyard and beyond, suggestions on how
to expand pollinator-friendly plantings in your neighborhood, and provide
all the resources you need to increase floral resources to provide food for
bees and other pollinators.



Planting a pollinator garden in your backyard is great, and that great work
can be amplified when cities and publicly managed spaces also add to
overall habitat. A single city park can provide many native bees everything
they need to survive since most native bees only travel a couple hundred
meters from their nests to where they forage.



Providing and protecting habitat is essential to supporting pollinators,
but using pesticides near pollinator habitat is like hosting a party and
poisoning the punch bowl. If your plantings are to be helpful to bees they
also need to be protected from pesticides. Fortunately, dozens of cities
across the country have already passed policies to stop using bee-toxic
pesticides. In many cases these policies were introduced by citizens, and
serve as models for other communities to demonstrate that common-sense
pesticide policy can be implemented in municipalities of all sizes. In
order to assist you in urging your city to adopt practices to protect
pollinators we’ve prepared a model policy to serve as a framework for
developing meaningful protections that is research-based and addresses key
issues.



Whether you use our model policy or another, the policy should address
these critical issues:



• Eliminating the use of neonicotinoid insecticides and other highly toxic,
systemic insecticides;

• Restricting the purchase and use of products that contain neonicotinoids
and seeds or plants that have been treated with neonicotinoids;

• Implementing integrated pest management on municipal property that relies
on non-chemical options first;

• Avoiding cosmetic pesticide applications; and

• Engaging residents through education about pollinators and pesticides.



To view the full text of our model policy or download it as a Word doc,
http://xerces.org/pesticide-local-policy/.  If you want to be a part of
making your community more pollinator-friendly, please feel free to contact
us at pesticides at xerces.org. We’d be thrilled to help out.
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