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Bumblebee Has Officially Been Added To The Ever-Growing List Of Endangered Species
The bumblebee has been officially added to the list of endangered species along with the gray wolf, grizzly bear, the northern spotted owl, and about 700 other extinct animal species.
According to National Geographic: The rusty-patched bumblebee (Bombus affinis), once a common sight, is “now balancing precariously on the brink of extinction,” according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Once thriving in 28 states and the District of Columbia, but over the past two decades, the bee’s population has plummeted nearly 90 percent. There are more than 3,000 bee species in the United States, and about 40 belong to the genus Bombus—the bumblebees.
Advocates for the rusty-patched bumblebee’s listing are abuzz with relief, but it may be the first skirmish in a grueling conflict over the fate of the Endangered Species Act under the Trump administration. According to James Stranger, a research entomologist, and Bumblebee ecologist: “There are a few little spots where we know they are. But only a really few spots.” The scientific name of the bee, Bombus affinis, was given due to the red patch in its abdomen. Even though the original listing date as an endangered species was set for April 2018, it was not until now that it was listed. According to Xerces Society director of endangered species Sarah Jepsen: “We are thrilled to see one of North America’s most endangered species receive the protection it needs. Now that the Fish and Wildlife Service has listed the rusty-patched bumble bee as endangered, it stands a chance of surviving the many threats it faces — from the use of neonicotinoid pesticides to diseases.”
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: “Bumblebees are among the most important pollinators of crops such as blueberries, cranberries, and clover, and almost the only insect pollinators of tomatoes…
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American Bumblebee Takes Step Toward Endangered Species Act Protection
American Bumblebee Takes Step Toward Endangered Species Act Protection
Bumblebee Once Found Across Country Has Nearly Vanished From 16 States
WASHINGTON— The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that the American bumblebee, whose populations have plummeted by nearly 90%, may warrant Endangered Species Act protection. The announcement kicks off a one-year status assessment of the species.
Today’s finding comes in response to a petition filed in 2021 by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Bombus Pollinator Association of Law Students of Albany Law School. Only two bumblebees — the rusty patched and Franklin’s — are now protected under the Act.
The American bumblebee was once common in open prairies, grasslands and urban areas across most of the United States but has experienced a rapid and severe decline. Over the past 20 years, it has disappeared or become very rare in 16 states; overall, observations of the bee have declined by nearly 90%.
“This is an important first step in preventing the extinction of this fuzzy black-and-yellow beauty that was once a familiar sight,” said Jess Tyler, a Center scientist and petition co-author. “To survive unchecked threats of disease, habitat loss and pesticide poisoning, American bumblebees need the full protection of the Endangered Species Act right now.”
American bumblebees are highly recognizable across the eastern United States, where they’re most common; the largest remaining populations are in the southern Great Plains and Southeast. But the bees are also found in southwestern deserts and, historically, as far north as North Dakota and Maine.
They buzz across a wide range of open habitats, where they forage on a variety of flowering plants. The decline of this once-common species could have serious consequences for ecosystems: their varied diet makes them a highly important pollinator, essential for wild plant life as well as for the production of cultivated crops.
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Why Logging Forests After Wildfires is Ecologically Destructive
Why Logging Forests After Wildfires is Ecologically Destructive
California Spotted Owl. Photo: USFS.
When it comes to wildfire, the U.S. Forest Service has it all wrong. In its just-released plan to chop down trees in nearly 17,000 acres hit by last year’s King fire in the Eldorado National Forest – including logging in 28 occupied spotted owl territories – the agency trots out the same tired falsehoods.
First, the Forest Service claims burned areas must be logged and replanted to “restore” the forest. In truth, wildfire is natural and necessary in the Sierra Nevada, even fires that burn very hot over huge areas, and human interference after fires is harmful rather than helpful.
For thousands of years, big fires have burned in the Sierra Nevada and are as ecologically critical for native plants and animals as rain and snow. And the trees have always grown back on their own.
But before the trees grow back, the burned forests erupt with life. Black-backed woodpeckers thrive in the most charred forests, feasting on the superabundance of insects and creating nesting holes in the freshly dead trees. After the woodpeckers, mountain bluebirds and house wrens use the abandoned cavities to raise their own chicks.
Deer mice and gophers eat fire-exposed seeds and newly sprouting vegetation. These rodents are food for imperiled California spotted owls, who have been documented hunting in charcoal forests, using dead trees to perch upon and listen for their prey rustling below.
Which brings us to falsehood No. 2: that logging will help, not harm, the spotted owl. This has never been true.
Heavily burned forests are great hunting grounds for the owl, but studies have proven that post-fire logging causes owls to abandon their territories. This comes as no surprise, since wildfire is natural but people chopping down trees is not.
Logging is the real threat to owls. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agrees – recently the agency decided to consider listing the California spotted owl as endangered or threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act, citing thinning and post-fire logging as primary threats to declining populations.
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For California Salmon, Drought And Warm Water Mean Trouble
For California Salmon, Drought And Warm Water Mean Trouble
With record drought and warming waters due to climate change, scientists are concerned that the future for Chinook salmon — a critical part of the state’s fishing industry — is in jeopardy in California.
Gushing downpours finally arrived in California last month, when December rains brought some relief to a landscape parched after three years of severe drought.
But the rain came too late for thousands of Chinook salmon that spawned this summer and fall in the northern Central Valley. The Sacramento River, running lower than usual under the scorching sun, warmed into the low 60s — a temperature range that can be lethal to fertilized Chinook eggs. Millions were destroyed, and almost an entire year-class of both fall-run Chinook, the core of the state’s salmon fishing industry, and winter-run Chinook, an endangered species whose eggs incubate in the summer, was lost.
The disaster comes on the heels of a similar event the previous autumn. It is also reminiscent of ongoing troubles on northern California’s Klamath River, where diversion of water for agriculture has at times left thousands of adult Chinook — the largest species of Pacific salmon — struggling to survive in water too shallow and warm to spawn in.
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