Environment & Energy

riversedge

(70,016 posts) Sun Feb 12, 2017, 10:16 AM Feb 2017

First, it was puppies. Now Trump is going after bees.

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Progressive Push ‏@progressivepush 3h3 hours ago

The regime just delayed endangered status for #bumblebee species that's on the brink of extinction. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/02/trump-bumble-bees-neonics-enadangered #environment #SaveBees

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Now Trump's Going After the Bumblebees

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2017/02/trump-bumble-bees-neonics-enadangered

The administration just delayed endangered status for a bumblebee species that's on the brink of extinction.

Tom PhilpottFeb. 10, 2017 5:54 PM

Smithsonian's National Zoo/Flickr

First, it was puppies. Now Trump is going after bees.

Just weeks before leaving office, the Obama administration's Fish and Wildlife Service placed the rusty patched bumblebee on the endangered species list—the first bee species to gain that status in the continental United States. Just weeks after taking office, the Trump administration temporarily reversed that decision. (See great pictures of this charismatic pollinator here.)

"We don't think this is just a freeze—it's an opportunity for the administration to reconsider and perhaps revoke the rule entirely," said an NRDC attorney.

The official announcement of the delay cites a White House memo, released just after Trump's inauguration, instructing federal agencies to freeze all new regulations that had been announced but not yet taken effect, for the purpose of "reviewing questions of fact, law, and policy they raise." The Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the endangered species list, acted just in the nick of time in delaying the bumble bee's endangered status—it was scheduled to make its debut on the list on February 10.

Rebecca Riley, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, told me the move may not be a mere procedural delay. "We don't think this is just a freeze—it's an opportunity for the administration to reconsider and perhaps revoke the rule entirely," she said.

Why would the Trump administration want to reverse Endangered Species Act protections for this pollinating insect? After all, the rusty patched bumble bee has "experienced a swift and dramatic decline since the late 1990s," with its abundance having "plummeted by 87 percent, leaving small, scattered populations in 13 states," according to a December Fish and Wildlife Service notice. And it's not just pretty to look at—the Fish and Wildlide Services notes that like other bees, rusty patched bumblebees "pollinate many plants, including economically important crops such as tomatoes, cranberries and peppers," adding that bumblebees are "especially good pollinators; even plants that can self-pollinate produce more and bigger fruit when pollinated by bumble bees."

The answer may lie in the Fish and Wildlife Service's blunt discussion of pesticides as a threat to this bumblebee species. ...........................

Neonics, as they're known, are a highly contentious topic. They make up the globe's most widely used insecticide class,.....................

Here is what the Fish and Wildlife Service wrote about neonics in the context of the rusty patched bumblebee:

Neonicotinoids have been strongly implicated as the cause of the decline of bees, in general, and for rusty patched bumble bees, specifically. ........................

Note also that of the 13 states that still harbor scattered rusty patched bumblebee populations, four—Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Ohio—are in the US Corn Belt, where corn and soybean crops from neonic-treated seeds are common.

The NRDC's Riley noted that as the EPA reassess neonics, it is obligated to consider the insecticides' impact on endangered species. .....................

If science guides the Trump team, this fast-disappearing bumblebee will get its endangered status soon, Riley said. "We don't think there's any legitimate basis to roll this rule back," she said. "The original decision to protect the bee was based on comprehensive scientific analysis." The question is the degree to which science will guide the administration as it decides the fate of this once-flourishing insect.