Conservation Groups Say a White House Plan to Save the Bees Doesn't Go Far Enough

The Obama administration has launched an effort to reduce the alarming death rate among bees and other insects that pollinate plants, but it's not moving against a class of pesticides that scientists view as a suspect.

The plan announced by the White House this week calls for more research into the effects of pesticides, both lethal and sub-lethal, and to figure out how bees are exposed in the field and at what levels. It also includes guidelines for government agencies to make public lands more hospitable to bees and monarch butterflies.

"Today's announcement marks an important step toward promoting the health of pollinators that are critically important to our economy, environment, and health," John Holdren, the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote in a blog post detailing the moves.

But the plan doesn't include any step to rein in the use of neonicotinoid pesticides, a class of bug-killer that's under increased scrutiny in the United States and Europe. That's disappointed some US environmentalists, who hoped the White House would go further.

"They put in some really good goals, and they talk about how there's multiple threats to the health of pollinators, and that's all good. We agree with that," Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food and Water Watch, told VICE News.

"But when it comes to these pesticides, we just don't seem to get that lofty a goal," Lovera added. "It's much more about 'We have to keep assessing, we have to finish some risk assessment processes.' It just doesn't get to that same ambitious goal of actually tackling something we know is a problem."

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The White House announcement came about a month after a pair of studies in the prestigious scientific journal Nature drew new connections between the bee deaths and the use of neonicotinoids. One of those suggested the pesticides were highly addictive to the insects, much like nicotine is to humans.

Neonicotinoids were introduced in the mid-1980s. They're typically applied as a seed coating and are absorbed into the plants as they grow — so scientists are concerned that the chemicals are being picked up by bees that carry pollen from one plant to another.

Domesticated honeybee populations have been dropping for a decade, with winter losses averaging 30 percent a year since 2006, according to Penn State University's Center for Pollinator Research. Wild bee populations are believed to have fallen as well. But bees are under pressure not only from pesticides, but from natural pests, weather, and habitat loss.

Bayer CropScience, which pioneered the development of neonicotinoids in the 1980s, said it welcomed the White House announcement as part of a "concerted approach" to saving bees.

"The US strategy to improve pollinator health is a reasoned and multi-faceted approach," Annette Schuermann, who runs the Bayer Bee Care Center, said in a written statement. "We fully support the call for extensive research into all aspects of pollinator health and the unprecedented commitment to increase suitable habitats and foraging, as a blueprint for a global approach to improving bee health."

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The company says bee deaths are "a complex issue," pointing to natural threats like parasitic mites and disease as prime suspects, and has criticized studies that linked their products to colony collapses. And other studies have raised questions about the connection between neonicotinoids and bee deaths, including a 2014 study that found little or no sign of them in pollen from treated crops.

In 2013, European Union regulators imposed near-total bans on three types of pesticides to allow further study. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency has said it's unlikely to approve new uses until further studies are complete.

But for many environmentalists, further study isn't enough. They want to see a federal ban on neonicotinoids until their safety is confirmed.

"More and more is coming out more frequently that casts more doubt on the safety of these chemicals, so for us that's reason enough to at least put a pause on it, to take a break and figure out all the mechanisms," Lovera said. "I think we're still learning how they work and what impacts they have on pollinators, why they went on the market before that was understood is the question we should be asking. We're playing catch up after this stuff is already out there."

Follow Matt Smith on Twitter: @mattsmithatl