An important link in the food chain has been placed on the endangered species list by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). The rusty patched bumble bee was once plentiful, but now is \u201cbalancing precariously on the brink of extinction,\u201d according to a news release from the service. According to FWS, it is the first bee of any kind in the contiguous 48 states to be declared endangered. \u201cThe rusty patched bumble bee is among a group of pollinators \u2013 including the monarch butterfly \u2013 experiencing serious declines across the country,\u201d said Service Midwest Regional Director Tom Melius. \u201cWhy is this important? Pollinators are small but mighty parts of the natural mechanism that sustains us and our world. Without them, our forests, parks, meadows and shrublands, and the abundant, vibrant life they support, cannot survive, and our crops require laborious, costly pollination by hand.\u201d It wasn\u2019t long ago that the bee was common in 28 states from Connecticut to South Dakota, but since the 1990s, the population has plunged 87 percent \u201cleaving small, scattered populations in 13 states and one [Canadian] province.\u201d The FWS says the bee is responsible for pollinating a wide variety of plants, including tomatoes, cranberries and peppers. They estimate the financial value of bees is $3 billion in the U.S. The reasons for the decline are many, according to the FWS, and include loss of habitat, disease, parasites, pesticides and climate change. There are some things that people can do to try to help the rusty patched bumble bee, including planting native flowers, limiting use of pesticides and leaving \u201cgrass and garden plants uncut after summer to provide habitat for overwintering bees.\u201d \u201cThe rusty patched bumble bee once lived in grasslands and prairies of the Upper Midwest and Northeast, but many of those areas are gone,\u201d FWS said in its news release. \u201cThe bee gathers pollen and nectar from a variety of flowering plants. It emerges in early spring and is one of the last bumble bee species to go into hibernation in the fall. Because it is active so long, it needs a constant supply of flowers blooming from April through September.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An important link in the food chain has been placed on the endangered species list by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). The rusty patched bumble bee was once plentiful, but now is \u201cbalancing precariously on the brink of extinction,\u201d according to a news release from the service. According to FWS, it is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23049,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23048"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}