What is pollinator habitat?
Pollinator habitat consists of areas with abundant and diverse flowering native plants that provide nourishment to bees and others through nectar and pollen. Native wildflowers, shrubs, and trees have adapted symbiotic relationships with pollinators. Ideally, their bloom times overlap to offer forage early spring through late fall.
Where can pollinator habitat be found?
Answer: Just about everywhere! Healthy pollinator habitat exists in conservation lands like national forests and preserves. Roadside ditches, powerline corridors, parks and grassy railway edges also harbor wildflowers that support pollinators when left unmowed. Farms with pasture edges, hedgerows, crop rotations and untilled areas provide habitat. Backyards gardens can also offer habitat when planted with native species.
Many pollinators range far and move between habitat patches across miles. Connecting landscapes allows them to access and move between feeding and nesting areas.
Why is pollinator habitat disappearing?
Development, invasive species, mowing and pesticide usage threaten the native flowering species and undisturbed spaces pollinators rely on. Urban and suburban sprawl eliminates meadows, prairies and woodlands. Invasive plants crowd out diverse native blooms that nourish pollinators.
Industrial agriculture favors vast tracts of monoculture crops over the mosaic of small fields and natural edges where wildflowers once thrived. Excessive mowing destroys roadside, utility and railroad habitats. Pesticides directly poison the plants and soil (and helpful insect species).
What are the consequences for pollinators?
Pollinators like the regal fritillary butterfly have disappeared across much of their former range. Managed honey bee colonies suffer total die-outs. Rusty patched bumble bee populations have declined over 90%, earning this once common species a spot on the endangered list.
These struggling pollinators are essential for orchard, berry and vegetable crop yields. Their loss ripples through ecosystems, reducing plant reproduction, diversity and food resources for other wildlife. Protecting existing habitat and creating new spaces is vital for reversing alarming pollinator declines.
The habitats pollinators depend on are shrinking across the country. But by better understanding these valuable ecosystems, we can take action to preserve, protect and expand spaces where pollinators can safely forage and nest. Our food supply, economy and environment depend on it.
