Call on Bayer to Protect Bees—Stop Making Neonicotinoids

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

Pollinators are struggling — in large part because pesticides have made much of their environment toxic.

Over the past quarter century, the increased use of a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, or neonics for short, has made America’s agricultural landscape roughly 48 times more toxic for bees.¹

Bees and other pollinators are dying from exposure to these toxic pesticides — and we need to protect them. That’s why we’re calling on one of the country’s largest pesticide manufacturers, Bayer, to do right by our bees and stop making and selling neonics.

Will you join us and call on Bayer to protect the bees at https://pennenvironment.webaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=53181?

You may know Bayer as the company that bought Monsanto, the manufacturer of Roundup and other pesticides, for $63 billion in 2018.² Over the past 25 years, the widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides has left much of our country’s agricultural landscape inhospitable to bees.³

And as toxicity goes up, pollinator numbers go down.

To get a scope of this decline that in large part has been driven by pesticides, let’s zero in on just one pollinator: the American bumblebee.

Once found across the country, in the past 20 years this bee has declined by a shocking 90% and disappeared altogether from eight states.⁴

We can’t turn a blind eye to the decline in bee populations — we need to act to protect them from one of their biggest dangers.

And we can start by protecting them from bee-killing pesticides. Tell Bayer: Stop making and selling products with neonics.

When we protect the bees, we’re also protecting all the plant species that rely on bees for pollination, and we’re protecting all the animals — including ourselves — that rely on those plants.

Pollinators sit at the foundation of ecosystems across the planet. As many as 75% of food crops and 90% of wild flowering plants rely on pollinators for reproduction. Without pollinators, many of the foods we enjoy — such as coffee and most fruits — will struggle to reproduce.⁵

We have to protect pollinators.

Join us in calling on Bayer to do the responsible thing for our bees and our planet by stopping its manufacture of neonics.

1. Stephen Leahy, “Insect ‘apocalypse’ in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides,” National Geographic, August 6, 2019.
2. Jeff Daniels, “Germany’s Bayer closes $63 billion Monsanto takeover, plans to drop US company’s name,” CNBC, June 8, 2018.
3. Stephen Leahy, “Insect ‘apocalypse’ in U.S. driven by 50x increase in toxic pesticides,” National Geographic, August 6, 2019.
4. Elizabeth Gamillo, “The American Bumblebee Has Nearly Vanished From Eight States,” Smithsonian Magazine, October 6, 2021.
5. “Pollinators vital to our food supply under threat,” Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, February 26, 2016.