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WWII - Major event occurred at the same time

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WWII - Major event occurred at the same time

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"In the United States, bees in fact have been in decline since World War II. We have half the number of managed hives in the United States now compared to 1945. We're down to about two million hives of bees, we think. And the reason is, after World War II, we changed our farming practices. We stopped planting cover crops. We stopped planting clover and alfalfa, which are natural fertilizers that fix nitrogen in the soil, and instead we started using synthetic fertilizers. Clover and alfalfa are highly nutritious food plants for bees. And after World War II, we started using herbicides to kill off the weeds in our farms. Many of these weeds are flowering plantsthat bees require for their survival. And we started growing larger and larger crop monocultures. Now we talk about food deserts, places in our cities, neighborhoods that have no grocery stores. The very farms that used to sustain bees are now agricultural food deserts, dominated by one or two plant species like corn and soybeans. Since World War II, we have been systematically eliminating many of the flowering plants that bees need for their survival. And these monocultures extend even to crops that are good for bees, like almonds. Fifty years ago, beekeepers would take a few colonies, hives of bees into the almond orchards, for pollination, and also because the pollen in an almond blossom is really high in protein. It's really good for bees. Now, the scale of almond monoculture demands that most of our nation's bees,over 1.5 million hives of bees, be transported across the nation to pollinate this one crop. And they're trucked in in semi-loads, and they must be trucked out, because after bloom, the almond orchards are a vast and flowerless landscape."
https://www.ted.com/talks/marla_spivak_why_bees_are_disappearing/transcript?language=en

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Thus, efforts by individual countries to reveal the drivers of colony losses are probably doomed. The international COLOSS network (Prevention of honey bee COlony LOSSes) has therefore been created to coordinate efforts to explain and prevent large scale losses of honey bee colonies at a global scale (Figs 3 and 4). For that purpose, international standards will be developed for monitoring and research in the form of an online BEE BOOK, analogous to the RED BOOK of the Drosophila community (Lindsley and Zimm, 1992). Only this will enable collaborative large scale international research efforts to identify the underlying factors and mechanisms, such as global ring tests conducted to ensure common practices across diagnostic laboratories
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3896/IBRA.1.49.1.01

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In recent years, however, several notable programs have been initiated for monitoring North American bee species. Since 2002, James Cane (U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bee Biology and Systematics Laboratory in Logan, Utah) has coordinated a network of professional scientists collecting data on the diversity and abundance of bees at native and cultivated squash and gourd plants in Canada, the United States, and Mexico using standardized observation and sampling techniques (http://www.ars.usda.gov/Research/docs.htm?docid=12040).
http://www.nap.edu/read/11761/chapter/7#134

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http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10646-012-0863-x

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Varroa destructor (Anderson and Trueman, 2000) has caused dramatic declines in honey bee abundance in North America and throughout the world (DeJong, 1990; DeJong et al., 1982a; Sammataro et al., 2000)
http://www.nap.edu/read/11761/chapter/5?term=varroa#76

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Increasing demand for food that relies on pollination

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Increasing demand for food that relies on pollination

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http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(09)00982-8?_returnURL=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0960982209009828%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

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Changes in agriculture, caused by large plantings of monocultures, loss of field margins, abandonment of crop rotation involving legumes (which have been replaced by fertilizers), and lower diversity of weeds in fields and pastures (caused by herbicide use) are all detrimental to pollinator populations

http://www.nap.edu/read/11761/chapter/1#ii

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FOOD SECURITY AND POLLINATION

A few crops rely entirely on pollinators for reproduction; without pollinators, a crop could only be produced with human help via hand pollination. Most crops showed a production increase between 5 and 50% as a result of pollination by animals (mainly bees).
http://www.fao.org/3/a-i1046e.pdf

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Potential Solutions to increase bee pop.

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Potential Solutions to increase bee pop.

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http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/local/2016/07/22/declining-wild-bee-populations-threaten-states-fruit-industry/87242152/

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Solutions to increase bees by installing them in homes

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Solutions to increase bees by installing them in homes

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Transcript of "Every city needs healthy honey bees"

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TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript: Bees have been rapidly and mysteriously disappearing from rural areas, with grave implications for agriculture. But bees seem to flourish in urban environments -- and cities need their help, too. Noah Wilson-Rich suggests that urban beekeeping might play a role in revitalizing both a city and a species.

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http://futuredirections.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/vol67-2014-125-130lu.pdf

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Income levels will be much higher by then so in order to provide food for a richer and larger population, we need to increase food production by approximately 70%

This can only be achieved if the necessary investments and sustainable structures beneficial for agricultural production are implemented

http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/expert_paper/How_to_Feed_the_World_in_2050.pdf

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Factors contributing to Declining Bee pop.

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Factors contributing to Declining Bee pop.

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Flowerless landscapes

Monocultures

Pesticides

https://www.ted.com/talks/marla_spivak_why_bees_are_disappearing?language=en#t-350364

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Bees recover slowly from insecticides due to their inability to reproduce quickly and makes them more vulnerable to local extinction (Tepedino, 1979)
http://www.fws.gov/pollinators/pollinatorpages/aboutpollinators.html

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Some University of Maine researchers are using an inactive landfill and a blueberry farm to educate farmers and non-farmers alike on how to keep the bee population flourishing

The project’s objective is to find the types of plants that are the most beneficial to bees, particularly since Maine’s natural flora is not conducive to bees

Throughout the project, researchers and educators will educate farmers on how to avoid flowers that use insecticides as these can harm bees.
http://phys.org/news/2015-06-honey-bee-populations-beneficial-pollinator.html

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What can individuals do to increase the bee population?

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What can individuals do to increase the bee population?

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INDIVIDUAL ACTION TO INCREASE POLLINATOR POPULATION

1) Plant a Pollinator Garden

2) Provide Nesting Habitat

3) Avoid or Limit Pesticide Use

http://www.fws.gov/pollinators/pollinatorpages/yourhelp.html

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Whose opinion on neonicotinoids is right?

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Whose opinion on neonicotinoids is right?

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"The Dutch scientists say neonicotinoids are negatively affecting bird populations. Bayer CropScience says neonicotinoids are safe when used correctly. Whom do we trust?

Maybe an independent group that just completed a review of over 800 scientific studies on the effects of neonicotinoids on wildlife. Overall, the scientists concluded that even when neonicotinoids were used according to the guidelines on their labels and applied as intended, the chemicals' levels in the environment still frequently exceeded the lowest levels known to be dangerous for a wide range of species—and were "thus likely to have a wide range of negative biological and ecological impacts." ~ Is this why no action has occurred

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Pesticides don't just kill pests. New research out of the Netherlands provides compelling evidence linking a widely used class of insecticides to population declines across 14 species of birds.

Those insecticides, called neonicotinoids, have been in the news lately due to the way they hurt bees and other pollinators. (Related: "The Plight of the Honeybee.")

This new paper, published online Wednesday in Nature, gets at another angle of the story-the way these chemicals can indirectly affect other creatures in the ecosystem.

Scientists from Radboud University in Nijmegen and the Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology and Birdlife Netherlands (SOVON) compared long-term data sets for both farmland bird populations and chemical concentrations in surface water. They found that in areas where water contained high concentrations of imidacloprid-a common neonicotinoid pesticide-bird populations tended to decline by an average of 3.5 percent annually.

"I think we are the first to show that this insecticide may have wide-scale, significant effects on our environment," said Hans de Kroon, an expert on population dynamics at Radboud University and one of the authors of the paper.

Pesticides and birds: If this story sounds familiar, it's probably because Rachel Carson wrote about it back in 1962. Carson's seminal Silent Spring was the first popular attempt to warn the world that pesticides were contributing to the "sudden silencing of the song of birds."

"I think there is a parallel, of course," said Ruud Foppen, an ornithologist at SOVON and co-author of the Nature paper.

Foppen says that while Carson battled against a totally different kind of chemicals-organophosphates like DDT-the effects he's seeing in the field are very much the same. Plainly stated, neonicotinoids are harming biodiversity.

"In this way, we can compare it to what happened decades ago," he said. "And if you look at it from that side, we didn't learn our lessons."

In the past 20 years, neonicotinoids (pronounced nee-oh-NIK-uh-tin-oyds) have become the fastest growing class of pesticides. They're extremely popular among farmers because they're effective at killing pests and easy to apply.

Instead of loading gallons and gallons of insecticide into a crop duster and spraying it over hundreds of acres, farmers can buy seeds that come preloaded with neonicotinoid coatings. Scientists refer to neonicotinoids as "systemic" pesticides because they affect the whole plant rather than a single part. As the pretreated seed grows, it incorporates the insecticide into every bud and branch, effectively turning the plant itself into a pest-killing machine.

This lock, stock, and barrel approach to crop protection means that no matter where a locust or rootworm likes to nibble-the root, the stem, the flower-the invader winds up with a bellyful of neurotoxins.

"The plants become poison not only for the insects that farmers are targeting, but also for beneficial insects like bees," said Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) who's been building a case against the widespread use of neonicotinoids. The pesticide's top-to-bottom coverage means the plants' flowers, pollen, and nectar are all poisonous too.

Worse still, Sass says, neonicotinoids can persist in the soil for years. This gives other growing things a chance to come into contact with and absorb the chemicals.

"So they actually end up in plants that grow on the sides of fields and that were never meant to be targeted," she said.

The new Nature paper shows strong evidence that neonicotinoids are dangerous even if not ingested.

The study looked at population statistics for over a dozen species of birds common to farmlands in the Netherlands. Most of these species are dependent on insects for all or part of their diet, though some also munch on seeds and grains. This means that there are two ways neonicotinoids could be harming the Netherlands' birds.

The first is ingestion. Studies have shown that while neonicotinoids are commonly considered to be safer for mammals and birds than for insects, they can still be lethal in high enough doses. And the best way to get a concentrated dose of neonicotinoids is to eat seeds coated with them. A 1992 study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that sparrows have difficulty flying after consuming a tiny amount of imidacloprid, and become immobile at higher doses.

The second way neonicotinoids can affect birds is by eliminating their food sources. Since these pesticides kill target and nontarget species alike, there are fewer flies, grasshoppers, stinkbugs, and caterpillars for the birds to feast on.
Causation vs. Correlation
While the new paper shows a correlation between high concentrations of neonicotinoids and declining bird populations, it doesn't claim the pesticides are a direct cause of the decrease.

To make sure the correlation wasn't some sort of coincidence, the team analyzed a number of alternative explanations.

Caspar A. Hallmann is an ornithologist and population ecologist at SOVON and Radboud University. As the lead author of the Nature paper, he explained that there are numerous causes for population declines in birds, from changes in the kinds of crops planted in any given year and the amount of fertilizer used to the urbanization of former farmland. But when the team looked at the data, none of these explanations held up.

Hallmann said that, as with any correlative study, caution is a watchword. "But still," he says, "we think we have a line of evidence that is building up."
Pesticide Maker Disagrees
Bayer CropScience, the primary manufacturer of imidacloprid, defends the use of neonicotinoids. In a statement responding to Hallmann and his colleagues, the company writes: "Neonicotinoids have gone through an extensive risk assessment which has shown that they are safe to the environment when used responsibly according to the label instructions."

The statement concludes by saying that the Nature paper fails to establish a causal link, and therefore "provides no substantiated evidence of the alleged indirect effects of imidacloprid on insectivorous birds."

"Indeed, we showed a negative correlation, which is already very alarming," the Dutch scientists said in response to Bayer CropScience's critique. "Showing causal links at the ecosystem scale would require landscape-scale experiments," which would be "difficult and probably very unethical."

The Dutch scientists say neonicotinoids are negatively affecting bird populations. Bayer CropScience says neonicotinoids are safe when used correctly. Whom do we trust?

Maybe an independent group that just completed a review of over 800 scientific studies on the effects of neonicotinoids on wildlife. The Task Force on Systemic Pesticides, composed of 29 multidisciplinary scientists, recently released its landmark report titled Worldwide Integrated Assessment of the Impact of Systemic Pesticides on Biodiversity and Ecosystems.

Overall, the scientists concluded that even when neonicotinoids were used according to the guidelines on their labels and applied as intended, the chemicals' levels in the environment still frequently exceeded the lowest levels known to be dangerous for a wide range of species-and were "thus likely to have a wide range of negative biological and ecological impacts."

David Gibbons, a member of the task force and head of the RSPB Centre For Conservation Science, the largest nature-conservation charity in Europe, explained that many European countries have already restricted three types of neonicotinoids -including imidacloprid-because of the mounting evidence that they harm bees.

(As of yet, similar protections do not exist in the U.S. Though not for lack of trying-the NRDC filed a legal petition just this week asking the EPA to withdraw its approval of neonicotinoid pesticides.)

"Over the last decade, there have been a number of mass die-offs of bees in several European countries," said Gibbons.

The process of planting corn can actually dislodge the neonicotinoid coating, which tractors then kick up into the air with the dust from fields.

"These clouds of dust contain very high concentrations of neonicotinoids," says Gibbons, "and are instantly lethal to bees."

But part of the goal of the Worldwide Integrated Assessment report is to show that bees aren't the only animals affected. The task force presents evidence that earthworms, aquatic invertebrates, lizards, fish, and many other animals are suffering ill effects as a result (either direct or indirect) of systemic pesticides.

Gibbons says it's hard to say whether we've entered a second "silent spring."

"However," he adds, "[neonicotinoid] use is now so widespread-nearly 40 percent of the global insecticide market-that there are valid reasons to be worried."

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Second Silent Spring? Bird Declines Linked to Popular Pesticides

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Pesticides don't just kill pests. New research out of the Netherlands provides compelling evidence linking a widely used class of insecticides to population declines across 14 species of birds. Those insecticides, called neonicotinoids, have been in the news lately due to the way they hurt bees and other pollinators.

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Crop pollinators such as bees, birds, moths and flies accidentally pollinate flowering plants by trying to feed off the pollen or nectar in a flower. During feeding, crop pollinators rub against the male part of the flower, the stamen, and cover themselves in pollen. When the crop pollinator moves onto a new plant, some of the pollen is rubbed onto the stigma of that plant, which is the top section of female part of plant called a pistil where seeds are generated. This is known as cross-pollination, which produces plants that are stronger.
http://www.mbgnet.net/bioplants/pollination.htm

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Pollinator declines, therefore, do not fundamentally threaten the world’s caloric supplies. However, fruits and vegetables, which add diversity to the human diet and provide essential nutrients, tend to depend heavily on pollinators (Prescott-Allen and Prescott-Allen, 1990; Roubik, 1995). Seven of the nine crops that provide at least 50 percent of the vitamin C available to the human diet globally depend partially or entirely on animal pollination for the production of fruits or seeds (oranges, cabbages, green peppers, tomatoes, melons, tangerines, watermelon) (FAO, 2005; Free, 1993; McGregor, 1976; USDA-NASS, 2006b).
http://www.nap.edu/read/11761/chapter/6

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Honeybees have thrived for 50 million years, each colony 40 to 50,000 individuals coordinated in amazing harmony. So why, seven years ago, did colonies start dying en masse? Marla Spivak reveals four reasons which are interacting with tragic consequences. This is not simply a problem because bees pollinate a third of the world's crops.