Folks, I know I'm being a buzzkill , but the conservation of declining pollinators is not going to happen with some cute hashtags and over simplified stories.

Where to even begin . Ok... native bees are in decline mostly because of climate change, pathogen spillover & habitat loss. In Ag areas, pesticides are important too. These threats are related to core capitalist & colonial practices that make our food systems unsustainable.

There are some good things about #NoMowMay. Maybe people are gathering that lawns are pollinator food deserts? But I cannot, as a conservationist buy into the solution of letting lawns, and non-native dandelions & clovers for bees that is being sold.

Conserving declining bees is hard work full of nuance. It requires unpacking messy systems, unequal power dynamics, widespread misinformation, etc. We are talking about 100s of species, each with their own ecological requirements and behaviours.

I've been told by ENGOs comms folks that people want to feel good and have a simple story or thing they can do to help. Is that really our bar? Do those same people care when they find out they have been completely misinformed for the sake of a simple story?

Lazy messaging without acknowledgement of complexity and nuance will result in the status quo. More species going extinct. Co-evolutionary relationships disrupted forever. I just can't do it. I expect so much more.

Weedy plant species support weedy bees (thanks @cwdekeyzer & @moltenblue). We can do better. We can teach people about what plants are supposed to be here.

We can talk about how in the spring, native flowers are woodland ephemerals and blooming trees. And how all of these plants are different in their abilities to feed bees amino acids, sugars, etc.

We can show people how to invite spring & fall natives onto their properties without encouraging them to proliferate invasives. How to keep things messy and allow decay and last years stems for nesting and overwintering materials.

My main issues are that these initiatives are perpetuating the idea that non-native weeds are good for all bees, that we can do the bare min & be doing good. I don't even want to think of all the misallocated resources and confusion that then hinder future conservation efforts.

Sorry for all the typos and incomplete sentences. Trying to make dinner and my phone is dying . Hopefully the gist gets through.

There are so many resources but I'll post this for now just to show that bees are very diverse and have different needs. The declining and specialist ones are important too.

https://jarrodfowler.com/specialist_bees.html

And this https://foecanada.org/the-bee-cause/bee-garden-guide/

To be clear, this is the stuff I'm talking about. NOPE

From this facebook post, which is an excellent read.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10108359684547232&id=28105780