Bee-getting Justice

The Natural Resources Defense Council, together with the Xerces Society, achieved a big victory for our bee friends at the end of 2009, and now that I'm back at the bloggin' desk, I wanted to make sure all of you know this bit of positive news.

We're all aware that bees and other pollinators are under severe pressure from the innumerable, often under-tested pesticides that saturate our environment. One pesticide in particular—spirotetramat (manufactured by Bayer CropScience under the trade names Movento and Ultor)—has been found to harm bees, yet was OK'd by the EPA for nationwide use last year.

The NRDC-Xerces lawsuit has righted that wrong. In late December, a federal court in New York ordered the EPA to reevaluate the chemical in compliance with the law, making future sales of this substance illegal in the U.S. Learn more here.

I'm glad that organizations like the NRDC and the Xerces Society are out there fighting the good fight.

NRDC Member Alert!

Are you a member of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)?

If you're a beekeeper AND an NRDC member, NRDC is looking for your help in gathering information on pesticide use and its effects on bees.

NRDC members who keep bees and would like to assist this great organization in going to bat for bees are encouraged to contact Levi Jones at ljones (at) nrdc (dot) org.

NRDC Takes EPA to Task

This lucky honeybee has a friend in NRDC.

Mounting evidence that pesticides are implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder certainly hasn't moved the EPA to action (not that EPA is doing much of anything these days). Under Bush&Co., the EPA has transmuted from Environmental Protection Agency to Enabling Polluters...Again (or might that be Entirely Pathetic Always? I'm sure there's no end to the unflattering acronyms we can apply in this instance; feel free to post a comment suggesting your own).

Fortunately for the bees, us, and the tattered remains of our ecosystem, the Natural Resources Defense Council (of which I am a proud card-carryin' member) is on the case and today issued the following press release announcing its new lawsuit against the EPA:

EPA Buzz Kill: Is the Agency Hiding Colony Collapse Disorder Information? NRDC Forced to Sue to Get Public Records on Bee Mystery

WASHINGTON, DC (August 18, 2008) – The Natural Resources Defense Council filed a lawsuit today to uncover critical information that the US government is withholding about the risks posed by pesticides to honey bees. NRDC legal experts and a leading bee researcher are convinced that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has evidence of connections between pesticides and the mysterious honey bee die-offs reported across the country. The phenomenon has come to be called “colony collapse disorder,” or CCD, and it is already proving to have disastrous consequences for American agriculture and the $15 billion worth of crops pollinated by bees every year.

EPA has failed to respond to NRDC’s Freedom of Information Act request for agency records concerning the toxicity of pesticides to bees, forcing the legal action.

“Recently approved pesticides have been implicated in massive bee die-offs and are the focus of increasing scientific scrutiny,” said NRDC Senior Attorney Aaron Colangelo. “EPA should be evaluating the risks to bees before approving new pesticides, but now refuses to tell the public what it knows. Pesticide restrictions might be at the heart of the solution to this growing crisis, so why hide the information they should be using to make those decisions?”

Get the full story here and please consider lending your support to NRDC's work.