The creature responsible for pollinating your tomatoes, peppers and cranberries is now back on the endangered species list following a lawsuit against the Trump administration by an environmental organization.
The rusty patched bumble bee is the first bumble bee to be declared endangered in the U.S. after the Trump administration Tuesday relisted it as endangered. Under the Obama administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service named the bee endangered in January. But any protections for the species were halted until March 21 because an executive order signed by President Donald Trump after he took office that froze new environmental regulations for 60 days.
The Natural Resources Defense Council sued on Feb. 14, asking that the Department of Interior and USWFS to return the bee to protected status. NRDC senior attorney Rebecca Riley said the move was made “just in the nick of time.”
“Federal protections may be the only thing standing between the bumble bee and extinction,” Riley said.
According to the USWFS, the rusty patched bumble bee population has dropped by 87 percent in recent years. It is currently only found in 13 states, down from its previous habitation in 28 states and the District of Columbia. Cause of the decline includes spread of disease and parasites, pesticide use, loss of habitat and climate change.
Bumble bees pollinate many important plants, allowing them to produce more and bigger fruit than crops pollinated by other types of bees. Insect pollination is worth nearly $3 billion in the U.S., USWFS said.
“The rusty patched bumble bee is among a group of pollinators – including the monarch butterfly – experiencing serious declines across the country,” USFWS Midwest regional director Tom Melius said. “Why is this important? Pollinators are small but mighty parts of the natural mechanism that sustains us and our world. Without them, our forests, parks, meadows and shrublands, and the abundant, vibrant life they support, cannot survive, and our crops require laborious, costly pollination by hand.”
Melius said people can help aid the species recovery by planting native flowers that bloom from spring through fall. Leaving grass and gardens uncut in the fall provides more habitat for bees into the winter, and avoiding pesticide use also increases chances the species can rebuild its population. Only the queen rusty patched bumble bee survives the winter, emerging from hibernation to lay eggs, producing a colony of worker bees.