Britain’s rarest bees in deep trouble, report warns
bee eating (Photo credit: acidpix)
From the great yellow bumblebee in Scotland to the potter flower bee clinging on in a few sites on England‘s south coast, many of Britain’s rarest wild bees are in deep trouble, according to a report highlighted in The Guardian.
The study blames intensive farming and urban sprawl which have decimated the flowery meadows that bees feed in as the key factors.
“The way we farm and use land across the UK has pushed many rare bees into serious decline,” said bee expert Prof Simon Potts, at the University of Reading, who led the study commissioned by Friends of the Earth. “I’m calling on the government to act swiftly to save these iconic creatures which are essential to a thriving environment and our food supply”.
The report focused on12 key species across Britain. It found the great yellow bumblebee has disappeared from 80% of its historic UK range and now relies on the unique machair habitat in western Scotland, a flower-rich grassland. On the south coast of England, the range of the solitary potter flower bee, which digs burrows to lay eggs in, has also shrunk dramatically. Britain’s rarest solitary bee, the large mason bee, is on the brink of extinction in Wales, the report found.
“The most pervasive causes of bee species decline are to be found in the way our countryside has changed in the past 60 years,” Potts writes in the report. “Intensification of grazing regimes, an increase in pesticide use, loss of biodiverse field margins and hedgerows, the trend towards sterile monoculture, insensitive development and the sprawl of towns and cities are the main factors in this.” While pesticide use is an issue, the two-year suspension of three neonicotinoid insecticides across the European Union agreed on 29 April will not reverse bee decline unless the other causes are also dealt with, the report warns.
“We need a bee action plan now,” said Sandra Bell, at Friends of the Earth. “These bee species are in real trouble. But people across the UK can help change all that with simple practical actions and by urging their MPs to play their part.” While a majority of EU nations backed the neonicotinoid ban, UK ministers opposed it.
Bees and other pollinators play a crucial role in food production, with three-quarters of global food crops relying on pollination. Britain has over 250 bee species, but numbers have fallen dramatically in recent years and 20 species have become extinct in the UK since 1900. Honeybees kept in hives have also suffered severe losses in recent decades, with pests and diseases such as the varroa mite adding to the problems of habitat loss and pesticide use.
Potts made a range of recommendations to reverse bee decline, including the promotion of sympathetic grazing regimes to ensure bees can feed until early autumn, encouraging farmers to sow wildflower margins in fields and setting quantitative targets for the reduction of all pesticide use. The latter measure was not done in the government’s National Action Plan for the Sustainable Use of Pesticides, published in February, despite EU law demanding member states “establish timetables and targets for the reduction of pesticide use”.
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WILDLIFE: ‘Victory for bees’ as European Union bans neonicotinoid pesticides blamed for destroying population
European Commission (Photo credit: tiseb)
Environmentalists hailed a “victory for bees” this week after the European Union voted for a ban on the nerve-agent pesticides blamed for the dramatic decline global bee populations. The Independent reports
Despite fierce lobbying by the chemicals industry and opposition by countries including Britain, 15 of the 27 member states voted for a two-year restriction on neonicotinoid insecticides. That gave the European Commission the support it needed to push through an EU-wide ban on using three neonicotinoids on crops attractive to bees.
Tonio Borg, the EC’s top health official, said they planned to implement the landmark ban from December. “I pledge to do my utmost to ensure that our bees, which are so vital to our ecosystem and contribute over €22bn annually to European agriculture, are protected,” he said.
Britain was among eight nations which voted against the motion, despite a petition signed by 300,000 people presented to Downing Street last week by fashion designers Vivienne Westwood and Katharine Hamnett. The Independent has also campaigned to save Britain’s bee population.
Four nations abstained from the moratorium, which will restrict the use of imidacloprid and clothianidin, made by Germany’s Bayer, and thiamethoxam, made by the Swiss company, Syngenta. The ban on use on flowering crops will remain in place throughout the EU for two years unless compelling scientific evidence to the contrary becomes available.
More than 30 separate scientific studies have found a link between the neonicotinoids, which attack insects’ nerve systems, and falling bee numbers. The proposal by European Commission – the EU’s legislative body – to ban the insecticides was based on a study by the European Food Safety Authority, which found in January that the pesticides did pose a risk to bees’ health.
But the British government argued that the science was incomplete and said the ban could impact food production. Owen Paterson, the environment secretary, said that they wanted to wait for the results of more trials before committing to the Europe-wide policy. The UK will not, however, be able to opt out of the ban.
Environment Minister Lord de Mauley said: “Having a healthy bee population is a top priority for us, but we did not support the proposal for a ban because our scientific evidence doesn’t support it. Significant countries agree with us that a ban is not the right action to take and we will work with them to get much better evidence. We will now work with farmers to cope with the consequences as a ban will carry significant costs for them.”
Green groups hailed Monday’s vote as a victory for science. “This decision is a significant victory for common sense and our beleaguered bee populations,” said Andrew Pendleton of Friends of the Earth. Marco Contiero, EU agriculture policy director for Greenpeace, said the vote “makes it crystal clear that there is overwhelming scientific, political and public support for a ban.”.
Syngenta, however, painted a different picture of the vote, with Luke Gibbs, head of corporate affairs in North Europe, saying the EC had failed again to convince all member states.
“The ban has been wrongly presented as a silver bullet for solving the bee health problem,” he told The Independent. “The proposal is based on poor science and ignores a wealth of evidence from the field that these pesticides do not damage the health of bees. Instead of banning these products, the Commission should now take the opportunity to address the real reasons for bee health decline: disease, viruses and loss of habitat and nutrition.”
The issue has fiercely divided the scientific community. Green groups and some scientists say the effects of the neonicotinoids are particularly devastating as the pesticide is applied to the seeds. That means it is present not only in the leaves which the insects eat, but also the pollen. Farmers, however, say the insecticides are vital to prevent crops being destroyed by pests including beetles and aphids.
Reaction from the scientists reflected this divide. Professor Lin Field, head of biological chemistry and crop protection at Rothamsted Research, said he feared the decision was based on “political lobbying” and could cause governments to overlook other factors contributing to declining bee numbers, such as climate change and viruses spread by mites.
But Dr Lynn Dicks, a research associate at the University of Cambridge, said that despite the contradictory studies, the EU was right to err on the side of caution. “This is a victory for the precautionary principle, which is supposed to underlie environmental regulation,” she said.
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BEES : Historic vote to ban neonicotinoid pesticides blamed for huge decline
A landmark step in the campaign to ban a nerve-agent pesticide blamed for causing mass die-offs in bees could be reached on Monday following one of the most intensive environmental lobbying battles of recent years. The Independent reports
Months of furious argument which has pitched green groups, the chemical industry, farmers, scientists and politicians at bitter odds with each other will be decided in a crucial EU vote in Brussels.
Britain’s Environment Secretary, Owen Paterson, has been criticised for failing to support a ban on three types of neonicotinoid pesticides which have been linked to a dramatic decline in the bee population.
Mr Paterson, who is backed by the Government’s new chief scientific adviser, the National Farmers’ Union, as well as some beekeepers, insists that there is insufficient evidence to support the two-year moratorium.
It is claimed that outlawing the chemical would result in a £650m rise in the annual costs of UK food production and lead to an even greater impact on wildlife through the use of older, more hazardous, chemicals to spray crops.
Last week, designers Katharine Hamnett and Vivienne Westwood handed a petition with 300,000 signatures to Downing Street demanding the Government support the initiative.
They are backed by Friends of the Earth and the campaign group Avaaz, which has 2.6 million signatories on its online petition calling for the ban.
But Mr Paterson, who has claimed he is the victim of a “cyber-attack” from opponents, is reported to have written to chemicals company Syngenta, manufacturer of one of the neonicotinoids, to say he was “extremely disappointed” by the European Commission’s proposed ban.
Last month, to the dismay of environmentalists, a vote by EU officials on outlawing the pesticide ended in deadlock having failed to reach the necessary qualified majority. It is believed that only Bulgaria has changed its position and is now expected to vote in favour of the moratorium. Britain was one of five countries to abstain.
Under EU rules the present arithmetic means that the Commission – which proposed the ban following a report from the European Food Safety Authority – might step in to make it a reality.
Opponents of the moratorium reject the evidence of more than 30 scientific studies in the last three years showing the harmful impact of neonicotinoids on bees, insisting that the link has not been established outside of the laboratory.
The chemicals attack insects’ nervous systems and are active in all aspects of a plant, meaning they are present in the pollen and nectar gathered by bees. A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “As the proposal currently stands we could not support an outright ban. We have always been clear that a healthy bee population is our top priority, that’s why decisions need to be taken using the best possible scientific evidence and we want to work with the commission to achieve this.
BEES : US government sued over use of pesticides linked to bee harm
Photo of Christine Todd Whitman, former New Jersey Governor and Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 2001-03 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The EPA was directed to set standards for radioactive materials under Reorganization Plan No. 3 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The US government is being sued by a coalition of beekeepers, conservation and food campaigners over pesticides linked to serious harm in bees. The Guardian reports
The lawsuit accuses the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of failing to protect the insects – which pollinate three-quarters of all food crops – from nerve agents that it says should be suspended from use. Neonicotinoids, the world’s most widely used insecticides, are also facing the prospect of suspension in the European Union, after the health commissioner pledged to press on with the proposed ban despite opposition from the UK and Germany.
“We have demonstrated time and time again over the last several years that the EPA needs to protect bees,” said Peter Jenkins, an attorney at the Centre for Food Safety who is representing the coalition. “The agency has refused, so we’ve been compelled to sue.”
“America’s beekeepers cannot survive for long with the toxic environment EPA has supported,” said Steve Ellis, a Minnesota and California beekeeper and one of the plaintiffs who filed the suit at the federal district court. “Bee-toxic pesticides in dozens of widely used products, on top of many other stresses our industry faces, are killing our bees.”
The EPA declined to comment on the lawsuit, but said in a statement: “We are working aggressively to protect bees and other pollinators from pesticide risks through regulatory, voluntary and research programmes. Specifically, the EPA is accelerating the schedule for registration review of the neonicotinoid pesticides because of uncertainties about them and their potential effects on bees.” However, even the accelerated review will not be completed before 2018.
The pesticides named in the lawsuits are clothianidin, manufactured by Bayer, and thiamethoxam, made by Syngenta. Neither company chose to comment on the lawsuit, but industry group Crop Life America (CLA) is representing some of the companies.
“The CLA fully supports and trusts the rigour of EPA’s review process for crop protection products, including neonicotinoids,” said Ray McAllister, senior director of regulatory affairs at CLA. “This class of product represents an important component of modern agriculture that helps farmers protect their crops. Neonicotinoids are thoroughly tested and monitored for potential risks to the environment and various beneficial species, including honeybees.”
A series of high-profile scientific studies in the last year have increasingly linked neonicotinoids to harmful effects in bees, including huge losses in the number of queens produced, and big increases in “disappeared” bees that fail to return from foraging trips. Disease and habitat loss are also thought to be factors in the recent declines in populations of bees and other pollinators.
A proposal to suspend the use of three neonicotinoids across the EU ended in a hung vote on 15 March. But Tonio Borg, the European commissioner for health and consumer policy, said this week he would take the proposal to appeal. If member states maintained their positions, the insecticides would be suspended. “The health of our bees is of paramount importance,” said Borg. “We have a duty to take proportionate yet decisive action to protect them wherever appropriate.”
The lawsuit against the EPA argues that, via “conditional registrations”, the regulator rushed the neonicotinoids into the market without sufficient examination and since that time has failed to take account of new information. “Pesticide manufacturers use conditional registrations to rush bee-toxic products to market, with little public oversight,” said Paul Towers, at Pesticide Action Network, part of the coalition.
The action by the coalition, which also includes the Sierra Club and the Centre for Environmental Health, follows an emergency petition in March 2012 which demanded the EPA suspend the use of clothianidin but was not acted upon. Also issued this week was a report from the American Bird Conservancy, which said the “EPA risk assessments have greatly underestimated [the risk to birds], using scientifically unsound, outdated methodology.”
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CITES 2013: Five shark species win protection against finning trade
English: Collection of different body parts of sharks, including fins and tongues. Chinese Medicine in a chinese pharmacy in Yokohama, Japan. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Cites summit votes for strictly controlled permits to export fins of oceanic whitetip, porbeagle and three species of hammerhead. The Guardian reports
The millions of sharks killed every year to feed the vast appetite for shark-fin soup in Asia now have greater protection, after the 178 nations at the world’s biggest wildlife summit voted to crack down on the trade.
An image of the Oceanic Whitetip Shark (Carcharhinus longimanus) with Naucrates ductor. The photo was taken on 21 October 2006 at Small Brother Reef in Egypt in the Red Sea. Photo: Johan Lantz, Malmö SWEDEN, 2006 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Those fishing for oceanic whitetip, porbeagle and three species of hammerhead shark will now require strictly controlled permits to export the fins. The move is a landmark moment for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) because many previous attempts to protect marine species – including these sharks – have failed, largely due to opposition from Japan and China. Those nations argued other bodies have responsibility for fisheries, but their opponents, including the EU, US and Brazil, said Cites is far more effective and conservation campaigners were delighted. Manta rays also won new protection.
“Dealing with fisheries is always hard due the huge economic and political interests involved,” said a delegate from one of the world’s top fin-exporting nations. She added the cultural attachment to serving shark fin soup at weddings in China – now affordable for millions more in the country’s swelling middle class – was very strong and very hard to break: “It would be like telling the French not to have champagne at their wedding.”
Sharks are highly sought after but are slow to mature and have few offspring, making them extremely vulnerable to overfishing. The culling of 1 million oceanic whitetip sharks every year has resulted, for example, in its Pacific population crashing by 93% between 1995 and 2010. Today the species was given protection in a close vote that just achieved the two-thirds majority required.
The porbeagle, once sought for its valuable meat especially for European markets, also saw a population crash, dropping 85% from 1981 to 2005 in the north and west Atlantic. In 2010, the EU had to halt fishing due to the tiny numbers left. The porbeagle shark lost out on protection in 2010 at Cites by one vote, but this summit, being held in Bangkok, saw a much wider coalition of 37 nations backing the shark proposals.
The fins of the scalloped hammerhead are among the most valuable of all and it is estimated that 2 million a year are killed. They are one of the rare sharks to school together, making it easy to catch large numbers. The Cites summit also voted to protect the great and smooth hammerhead sharks, because their fins are very similar and could have been targeted if only the scalloped hammerhead was protected.
Previous Cites meetings had seen similar protection proposals for sharks rejected, but new support from Latin American and west African countries, and the promise of cash from the European Union to help change fishing practices, won the day. The decisions could be reopened for debate at the final plenary session of the summit and potentially overturned. If, not all the measures will be implemented after an 18-month period in which enforcement measures can be set up.
Scientists estimate that about 100m sharks are killed by humans every year, representing 6-8% of all sharks and far above a sustainable level.
The shark fin trade is a global one, with Hong Kong at its hub, where 50% of all fins end up. Ten million kilogrammes of shark fins are shipped to its port every year, from 83 countries. Spain and Indonesia the leading sources, but other top 10 nations include countries such as Argentina, Nigeria, New Zealand and Iran.
One-third of the 450 known species of shark are endangered by overfishing, but the species protected on Monday are the most valuable and sought after. Vessels are often officially fishing for tuna or swordfish but can in fact catch far more sharks, particularly the oceanic whitetip shark. By finning the fish at sea and throwing the bodies back, single trips can results in many thousands of dead sharks.
The impact of the huge fishing fleets of Spain and France has been particularly severe on the porbeagle shark, whose meat is sold for a high price, and it has fallen by more than 95% in the Mediterranean an 90% in the north-east Atlantic.
Prof Nick Dulvy of Simon Fraser University in Canada and a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature expert panel on sharks, said wiping out populations of the fish often plays havoc with the ecosystem: “When we remove the top predator, their prey can burgeon and affect the food chain all the way down.” This can affect seafood prized by people, as happened off North Carolina when commercial fishing destroyed the big shark population, leaving rays to thrive which in turn destroyed bay scallops.
“We are thrilled that the tide is now turning for shark conservation, with governments listening to the science and acting in the interests of sustainability,” said Elizabeth Wilson, manager of Pew’s global shark campaign. “With these new protections, they will have the chance to recover and once again fulfil their role as top predators.”
Manta rays, known by divers as friendly and inquisitive gentle giants with a seven-metre wingspan, also got new protection against exports at the Cites summit, backed by 80% of the voting nations. They are easy to catch but extremely slow to reproduce, delivering just one pup every two to five years. Their populations are being devastated off Sri Lanka and Indonesia to feed a newly created Chinese medicine market in which their gill plates, used to filter food from the ocean, are sold as a purifying tonic. Around 5,000 a year are killed, generating $5m for traders, but where protected they bring in $140m from tourism.
Finally, the nations at the Cites summit chose unanimously to ban all international trade in a species of freshwater sawfish that is now restricted to northern Australia. They are virtually extinct over much of their former west Pacific range, and have not been seen for decades in Indonesia and Thailand. They were sought for their highly valuable fins ($4,000), their saws ($1,500) and by aquariums. Monday’s vote means all sawfish species have been banned from international trade.
Carlos Drews, head of WWF’s Cites delegation, called the shark votes “a landmark moment”. Ralf Sonntag, shark specialist for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said: “This is a bold move by Cites. These sharks are worth far more alive than dead to local communities.”
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- Conservation Body Votes to Regulate Shark Trade (abcnews.go.com)
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- Conservation body votes to regulate shark trade (seattletimes.com)
- ‘Pressure’ on shark protection vote (bbc.co.uk)
- Cites votes to regulate shark trade (independent.ie)
- Sharks at risk of extinction from overfishing, say scientists (guardian.co.uk)
- Protections aim to moderate trade in shark fins (abc.net.au)
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