More than 40 percent of insects could go extinct globally in the next few decades. So why did the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week OK the 'emergency' use of the bee-killing pesticide sulfoxaflor on 13.9 million acres?
EcoWatch teamed up with Center for Biological Diversity via EcoWatch Live on Facebook to find out why. Environmental Health Director and Senior Attorney Lori Ann Burd explained how there is a loophole in the The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act under section 18, "that allows for entities and states to request emergency exemptions to spraying pesticides where they otherwise wouldn't be allowed to spray."
A butterfly in the National Butterfly Center, a private sanctuary for butterflies in southern Texas, on Jan. 22. Maren Hennemuth / picture alliance / Getty Images
While Trump's border wall has yet to be completed, the threat it poses to pollinators is already felt, according to the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas, as reported by Transmission & Distribution World.
Get ready to toast bees, butterflies and hummingbirds. National Pollinator Week is June 17-23 and it's a perfect time to celebrate the birds, bugs and lizards that are so essential to the crops we grow, the flowers we smell, and the plants that produce the air we breathe.
I heard a local story of a man who, in his excitement to kill a rattlesnake, used the only thing he had available ─ his thermos bottle. The next scene in this drama has the man in the hospital receiving anti-venom to treat a snake bite.
It's a scary time for the world's pollinators. A study published in February warned that more than 40 percent of the world's insects could go extinct within the next 30 years. Another study published in Nature in March found that a third of wild pollinator species in the UK had declined since 1980.
Jason Hosking / The Image Bank / Getty Images Plus
Police are looking for an arsonist who burned several beehives in Alvin, Texas, leading to the deaths of more than half a million bees, CNN reported Wednesday.
There are insects that feed on plants and those that feed on other insects. In your garden, you want as many of the carnivores as possible so that the herbivores won't devour your crops. Unfortunately, the predators don't always show up in time to save your broccoli seedlings from those little white bugs sucking the life out of them. But if you create the right habitat, you'll increase the chances that the good bugs will be on hand when the bad bugs show up to feast.
If you're looking for some inspiration, you're in luck. Booksellers will soon see a massive influx of powerful and informative new environmental books. They cover everything from pollinators to animal cognition and predator coexistence to the morality of environmental protection.
A bumblebee on a flower. Viktoria Rodriguez / EyeEm / Getty Images
A new study has found that exposure to certain pesticides can alter bees' genes, leading researchers to call for tougher regulations on the widely-used chemicals.
The study, published Wednesday in Molecular Ecology, looked at the impact of two neonicotinoid pesticides on bumblebee populations and found that they impacted genes involved in a variety of important biological processes.
