Pollinator Conservation in the Farm Bill
Next week, the recently appointed congressional Farm Bill conference committee will meet to combine the 2018 Senate and House of Representative Farm Bills into a single consensus bill. Hanging in the balance are important programs, provisions, and environmental laws that support pollinator conservation.
What are pollinators, and why are they important?
Pollinators are animals such as bees, butterflies, bats, and birds that carry pollen from flower to flower, fertilizing both wild and cultivated plants to produce seeds and fruit. They are essential to maintaining ecosystems across the nation and around the world. Pollination sustains plants that provide food and shelter for people and wildlife, medicines for people and animals, and diverse and healthy landscapes, from forests to deserts. About one in three bites of food we eat depends on pollinators, and native bees alone provide an estimated $3 billion in crop pollination services every year in the U.S.
Unfortunately, some native pollinator populations are in decline. The iconic monarch butterfly is currently under consideration for listing under the Endangered Species Act. Its population dropped by 81 percent in the 2000s with the loss of its food source — milkweed — in Great Plains states from agriculture and development. Bumble bees are also declining nationwide, and last year the rusty patched bumble bee was listed as federally endangered. Its population has declined by 87 percent over the last 20 years due to threats such as habitat loss, intensive farming, pesticide use, and climate change.
Why the Farm Bill is important for pollinators?
The Farm Bill is the largest single source of federal funding for wildlife conservation on private lands. Two-thirds of the land in the Lower 48 is privately owned, and more than 40 percent of that is managed for agriculture. Wildlife depends on these wetlands, croplands, rangelands, and woodlands nationwide.
Congress astutely recognized the value of the Farm Bill to pollinator conservation in the 2008 and 2014 legislation. The current Farm Bill authorizes the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to fund and implement a suite of voluntary conservation programs on private land to benefit a range of pollinators, including at-risk species, such as monarch butterflies and bumble bees.
Farm Bill programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), and Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) assist farmers with planting milkweed and other practices that benefit pollinators while keeping working lands working and strengthening rural economies. The USDA has set pollinator conservation as a goal of CSP and a priority practice for the CRP State Acres for Wildlife (SAFE) initiative.
Pollinators in the 2018 House and Senate Farm Bills
The House and Senate passed their respective versions of the 2018 Farm Bill earlier this summer. We are grateful that both bills retain pollinator provisions from the 2008 and 2014 Farm Bills, but we are concerned that the two pieces of legislation diverge on new support for pollinator conservation. The Senate bill proposes to reauthorize the Pollinator Protection initiative, which would reconstitute the Pollinator Health Task Force to address pollinator health, disease, population decline, and federal protection, and direct the USDA Office of the Chief Scientist to coordinate research on pollinators.
On the other hand, the House legislation includes a horrific “Poisoned Pollinators Provision,” that would exempt the Environmental Protection Agency from consulting with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on the effects of pesticide contamination on federally protected species under the Endangered Species Act — even though two butterfly species were added to the list of threatened and endangered species in 2015 due, in part, to pesticide use.
What’s next?
Upon merging their two Farm Bills, both the Senate and House will need to each pass the combined legislation again before President Trump can sign it into law. Whether this can happen before the current legislation expires in September 2018 is unclear. Defenders will be working endlessly to ensure that Congress settles on a Farm Bill that maintains conservation funding, programs, and provisions that benefit both landowners, wildlife — including pollinators — while preserving existing environmental laws.
