Washington – Falling populations of honeybees and other pollinators represent a largely ignored crisis that threatens billions of dollars in farm output, the National Academy of Sciences warned Wednesday.
In a 316-page report, it said long-term population trends of some bees, birds, bats and other animals and insects that spread pollen among flowers are “demonstrably downward.”
Honeybees play a necessary part in the production of crops with estimated value of up to $19 billion a year, said the academy’s Committee on the Status of Pollinators in North America.
Bumblebees are used to pollinate greenhouse tomatoes in environments where honeybees refuse to work, and leaf-cutter bees pollinate vast fields of alfalfa.
The economic value of other species – including bats, butterflies, wasps and moths – has never been calculated, the committee said.
But disease, parasites, predators, habitat destruction and other factors scientists don’t even know about endanger this unnoticed but vital resource, the committee said.
“Despite its apparent lack of marquee appeal, a decline in pollinator populations is one form of global change that actually has credible potential to alter the shape and structure of terrestrial ecosystems,” said committee chair May Berenbaum, an entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The decline in honeybee populations has reached the point that last year, for the first time in more than a decade, honeybees were imported from outside North America.
Among recent causes of the decline in honeybees was the appearance in the U.S. of a parasitic mite. A virulent disease of bees also has developed antibiotic resistance. And misapplication of pesticides and unintended effects of transgenic crops also have killed some bees, according to the report.
The committee called on government agencies to step up efforts to protect pollinators.
