Tell the Administration to Keep Bee-Killing Pesticides Out of Wildlife Refuges

From PennEnvironment (http://www.pennenvironment.org):

“Neonic” bee-killing pesticides are lurking around every corner for bees. One study found neonics on 54% of all sampled plants.¹

Right now, these pesticides are even allowed in the places where bees should be safest: wildlife refuges. The result? Bees are left navigating minefields of potentially fatal pesticides with no escape.

But if you speak up today, you could help protect bees from the threat of neonics across our country’s 95 million acres of wildlife refuges. Call on the Biden administration to ban bee-killing pesticides in wildlife refuges at https://pennenvironment.webaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=48658.

Bees pollinate everything from apples to zinnia flowers. Small but mighty, they’ve got the weight of a fragile biodiversity on their wings — but bees are struggling to keep their own populations afloat.

Nearly 90% of American bumblebees have disappeared, and the species has completely vanished from eight states.² One in 4 native bee species is imperiled.³ And beekeepers have seen record-breaking colony collapse in recent years.

The common killer? Bee-killing pesticides.

If we ban neonics from wildlife refuges, we ensure that there are millions of acres of land for bees to roam, freed from the existential threats of bee-killing pesticides.

Help keep bees safe from neonics in wildlife refuges.

Wildlife refuges are meant to be just that — a safe haven for critters. Research even shows that wildlife refuges support a diversity of healthy bee populations, giving subspecies from American bumblebees to fairy bees an escape.⁴

But a wildlife refuge open to neonics is no refuge at all. Neonics poison baby bees’ brains, interrupt bee sleep patterns, and prevent healthy bee reproduction.⁵

We’re rallying PennEnvironment supporters to call on the Biden administration to take this simple bee-saving action that the Obama-Biden administration had previously taken.⁶ Can we count on you to speak up for bees today?

Tell the Biden administration: Keep bee-killing pesticides out of wildlife refuges.

1. Pesticide Research Institute, “Pilot Study on Neonicotinoids in Bee-Friendly Flowers,” May 21, 2014.
2. Elizabeth Gamillo, “The American Bumblebee Has Nearly Vanished From Eight States,” Scientific American, October 6, 2021.
3. Maryellen Kennedy Duckett, “Nature needs us to act,” National Geographic, March 4, 2020.
4. Ezra S. Auerbach, William P Johnson, Jude R Smith, Nancy E McIntyre, “Wildlife Refuges Support High Bee Diversity on the Southern Great Plains,” Oxford Academic, May 22, 2019.
5. Mary Katherine Moore, “Meet the bees we’re working to save,” Environment America, May 4, 2021.
6. BBC, “US wildlife refuges end ban on neonics and GM crops,” August 4, 2018.