Washington---The White House unveiled Tuesday a plan to reverse an alarming decline in the populations of bees and other pollinators that play a critical role in agriculture and the environment.
Honey bee pollination alone adds $15 billion in value to US crops each year, wrote John Holdren, one of President Barack Obama's main science advisors.
Bees and other pollinators are responsible for pollinating more than a third of the US food supply, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, a conservation group.
But pollinators are struggling for a variety of reasons, and over the past 12 months beekeepers lost 42 percent of their honey bee colonies mostly in winter, the US Department of Agriculture estimated last week.
That loss marked the second worst year on record for bee mortality in the United States, according to the USDA. The worst was the 2012-13 season, with the loss of 45 percent of colonies.
This mysterious phenomenon has been observed since 2006, mainly in North America but also in Europe, and is known as "colony collapse disorder" -- the more or less sudden death of millions of adult insects in beehives.
Scientists point to a series of factors: sickness, parasites, dwindling food sources and harmful pesticides.
The new US plan also seeks to rebuild populations of Monarch butterflies, other pollinators that are also in sharp decline.
Over the past two decades, the number of Monarchs migrating south, mainly to Mexico, in winter to escape the cold has dropped by 90 percent.
To address the problem, the White House aims to limit bee mortality in winter to a maximum of 15 percent over 10 years.
It also aims to restore seven million acres (2.8 million hectares) of habitat for these insects over the next five years through federal intervention and partnerships between the public and private sectors.
AFP
