TRAVERSE C ITY, Mich. (AP) — Federal officials have delayed the first-ever listing of a bee species in the continental U.S. as endangered — one day before it was to take effect.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Jan. 11 it was placing the rusty patched bumblebee on the endangered list. It’s among many types of bees that play a vital role in pollinating crops and wild plants. It once was common across the East Coast and much of the Midwest but its numbers have plummeted since the late 1990s.
The listing was to take effect Friday. But in a Federal Register notice, the service said it was postponing the effective date to March 21 because of a White House order temporarily freezing any regulations that have been published but haven’t taken effect.
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People may want to easily dismiss this but we are already in a world of hurt with what is happening to our honeybees in this country. The science is just now starting to get serious about potential causes for their demise. Though I suspect there is more than one thing going on that has decimated their populations and killed many of them off. This is what happens when science is denied or treated like a trivial pursuit. Good luck to all of us when we have to figure out how to get our food pollinated and table ready without paying through the teeth for the luxury of simple crops we’ve all become accustomed to. This is more tragic then a lot of people realize.
Bubblebees pollinate many berries, clover, tomatoes and so many other crops. They don’t always pollinate the same plants or flowers as honeybees but they do share many of the same tasks with honeybees. Thankfully, we still have plenty of bubblebees where I live…but not as many honeybees like we used to.