Crisis? What pollinator crisis?

One Reply to “Crisis? What pollinator crisis?”

1. It may be the money quote but digging into the footnotes yields Business as usual? Questioning the global pollination crisis. This would seem to be the reference for the “pollination crisis’ quote. It’s published in 2005 and many of its references are more than 10 years old. Searching the text gives just one hit for herbicide and only 7 for pesticides. Both of these are far more widely used than they were in the mid-90s. Nonetheless. it makes for interesting reading and doesn’t discount that a crisis may be under way:

   It is possible that a global pollination crisis is, indeed, in progress, but I do not believe that evidence for such a crisis is currently strong. I suggest that the observed decline in managed honeybee colonies in the USA, and similar concerns about declining bumblebees in Europe, has driven much of the rhetoric on the degradation of pollinator services. In Europe, there is no evidence to indicate that declining bumblebees have depressed crop productivity, whereas in the North America, lower yields of bee-dependent crops, such as alfalfa, almonds and blueberries, are partially a reflection of excessive intensification that has created an unprecedented demand for a pollinator service met by an over-reliance on a few species.

   However, one should not become complacent. The simplified agricultural landscapes that characterize much of Europe and North America, and increasingly much of the tropics, lack natural or semi-natural habitats that insects, birds and bats favour.

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