June 19-25, 2017 has been designated National Pollinator Week by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of the Interior, Pollinator.org notes. It's a ten-year-old program, according to the site:
Ten years ago the U.S. Senate's unanimous approval and designation of a week in June as "National Pollinator Week" marked a necessary step toward addressing the urgent issue of declining pollinator populations.
One pollinator program that Bluestem appreciates (and knows to be genuine citizen science, rather than "beewashing") is the Minnesota Bee Atlas that the University of Minnesota is conducting through 2019 with the support of the state's Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund.
What is the project? According the U's website:
When most people hear the word “bee” they probably start to picture a yellow and black striped honey bee or a big, fluffy bumble bee. Honey bees and bumble bees are easily recognized and play an important role in pollination, but they are a small fraction of the almost 20,000 bee species in the world. In contrast to honey bees and bumble bees, most bees are solitary and build their own nests alone. They may live near other bees of the same species but they do not work together to form one colony. These are the bees the Minnesota Bee Atlas will focus on.
The Minnesota Bee Atlas, a four-year project funded by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund (ENRTF), is a citizen science program designed to use volunteer participants to create a state-wide list of native bees found in Minnesota. The last time a survey of Minnesota bees was completed was in 1919 when only 67 species were listed. Scientists suspect that there may be closer to 400 species but we need the help of citizen scientists like you to find them all. Your observations, combined with historical records from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the University of Minnesota Insect Collection, will provide important information on the diversity of species in Minnesota. The information we gather on species distribution and diversity will be important to help us track if or how bee populations are changing and how those changes might affect land management decisions.
There are three ways to participate in the Minnesota Bee Atlas:
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submit anecdotal observations when you see bees out and about,
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observe bumble bees on an assigned route, or
- submit observations of a nesting block
We'll be signing up, since the new vegetable garden we're helping tend with friends includes many pollinator-friendly plants and practices. It's attracted many species of native pollinators, and our observations can help scientists piece together the puzzle that pollinator decline has created.
What's more, documenting the native pollinator populations on the site won't stop when Pollinator Week ends--it's not one of those feel good gestures that does more for the participants' virtue signaling than for the bees.
Photo: A brown-belted bumblebee. Photo by Chris Koester via Bumble Bee Watch.
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