The Home Depot is Phasing Out Bee-Killing Insecticides...Slowly Bees play a super important role in nature. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 percent of food worldwide, 71 are pollinated by bees. But bees are disappearing at alarming rates, and there are many likely reasons why that’s happening. Among the culprits are certain pesticides. Care2’s Diane M. explains: Global insect collapse driven by industrial farming, says new 'Insect Atlas' Insects are in decline across the world because of industrial farming and heavy pesticide use which are threatening food production, according to the Insect Atlas released today by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung and Friends of the Earth Europe. Insects keep the planet's ecological system running, and ensure our food supply - 75% of our most important crops depend on pollination by insects. Insects also improve soil quality and reduce plant pests by decomposing manure and dead plant matter. >> Read the Insect Atlas <<
The Same Pesticides Linked to Bee Declines Might Also Threaten Birds On a late spring morning, Christy Morrissey, a wildlife ecotoxicologist at the University of Saskatchewan, drove her mud-splattered pickup past an undulating sea of cultivated fields two hours north of Saskatoon. Now and then, the land rose to form low green hills, and the sound of aspen leaves rattling in tall-grass sloughs floated in the open windows. All the way to the horizon, shallow ponds, called potholes, punctured the landscape, each dotted with ducks and ringed with bulrushes and cattails.
Neonics: What They Are And Why To Avoid Them At All Costs Our bees are in trouble. Global bee populations have been falling for quite a while now at an alarming rate. And this is much more serious than just a lack of honey—bees pollinate a huge amount of our plants, fruit and vegetables. If they disappeared completely, it’s safe to say that our everyday lives would be dramatically affected. Love This? Bee-Killing Pesticide Found In 75 Percent Of Global Honey Samples There’s nothing sweet at all about the results of a recent study of honey from around the world. In samples from every continent except Antarctica, traces of neonicotinoid pesticides were found in 75 percent of them – even in honey from remote places like Tahiti. Almost half the samples contained at least two different types of pesticides. The contamination rates were highest in North America, where a shocking 86 percent of the honey samples contained at least one neonicotinoid.
6 mai 2021 Rejecting Bayer Appeal, Top EU Court Upholds Ban on Bee-Killing Pesticides The European Union's top court ruled Thursday in favor of the European Commission's partial ban on three pesticides hazardous to bees, much to the chagrin of Bayer—the German pharmaceutical and biotech company that merged with agrochemical giant Monsanto in 2018. Bayer attempted to overturn the ban and undermine the E.U.'s "precautionary principle" for the protection of environmental and human health, but the European Court of Justice dismissed the corporation's appeal and backed a lower court's 2018 decision to uphold restrictions on the use of some pesticides on certain crops.
27 août 2021 'Ban Neonicotinoids Right Now,' Say Conservationists After EPA Pesticide Review Environmental and food safety advocates highlighted Thursday the decline in iconic pollinators following new analyses released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency showing three widely used neonicotinoid insecticides are "likely to adversely affect" the majority of the endangered plants and animals the agency assessed. "These extremely toxic pesticides are causing drastic ecological harm, both the collapse of bee populations as well as putting literally hundreds of endangered species at extinction risk across the country." “Now the EPA can't ignore the fact that these popular insecticides are wiping out our country's most endangered plants and animals," Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. "Neonicotinoids are used so widely, and in such large quantities," she said, "that even the EPA's industry-friendly pesticide office had to conclude that few endangered species can escape their toxic effects."