Today I read an article about how, none other than the President of the United States … Obama, has come out in defense of the honey bee. Read the article here
Now, don’t get me wrong, I think this is amazing, however, just how much “saving” it will actually do is debatable.
Last June (2014) the White House created a task force to find ways to save the bees. See, even though big corporates run the western world, I will say that Obama at least has enough savvy to realise that if the bees go … so does life as we know it. And the extinction of the bees (and other pollinators) is getting all too close.
So the task force has come out with a 10 year plan. In a nutshell this is it:
- Bump monarch butterfly numbers to 225 million.
- Reduce winter honey bee colony losses by about half.
- Make 7 million acres of land more pollinator-friendly.
- Research how to minimize bees’ exposure to pesticides.
- Re-evaluate the effects of neonicotinoid insecticides.
Perhaps they can achieve the increase in monarch butterfly and maybe they can reduce the winter honey bee losses. They definitely can make 7 million acres of land more pollinator-friendly.
But the last two????
They already know that neonicotinoid insecticides and pesticides are the number one killer of bees – see my bog post here.
And how many bees will die while they do their research?
Of course we know that the White House is organic and has it’s own bees.
Maybe that’s one of the reasons the President took this stance. However, he’s not gone far enough and groups are now by-passing the President and asking the First Lady to help as reported by the Washington Examiner.
A letter provided by Friends of The Earth asks that Michelle Obama use her influence with the administration and support a ban on these chemicals.
Let’s hope she can be a mother for the bees and defend them. This is a critical situation and a lot more urgency is needed ….. the bees can’t wait much longer.
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