Beleid en debat

Current bee population declines and colony failures are well documented yet poorly understood and no single factor has been identified as a leading cause. The evidence is equivocal and puzzling: for instance, many pathogens and parasites can be found in both failing and surviving colonies and field pesticide exposure is typically sublethal. Here, we investigate how these results can be due to sublethal stress impairing colony function. We mathematically modelled stress on individual bees which impairs colony function and found how positive density dependence can cause multiple dynamic outcomes: some colonies fail while others thrive. We then exposed bumblebee colonies to sublethal levels of a neonicotinoid pesticide. The dynamics of colony failure, which we observed, were most accurately described by our model. We argue that our model can explain the enigmatic aspects of bee colony failures, highlighting an important role for sublethal stress in colony declines.

An increasing body of scientific evidence indicates that many chemicals have biological effects at doses previously considered negligible. It is increasingly evident that more subtle deleterious effects can occur due to longer-term exposure to relatively low doses of chemicals, individually or in mixtures. New concerns have recently been raised about the impact of pesticides on non-target organisms including insects, especially bees, and amphibians. Studies suggest that low doses of neonicotinoids, a group of neurotoxic chemicals widely used in many countries as insecticides, could have sublethal effects on honey bees and bumble bees with serious consequences for wild populations of these crucially important pollinators and therefore for agriculture and the environment. It has also been suggested that detailed investigation of the effect of neonicotinoids on mammalian brain function, especially brain development, is needed to protect human health, especially that of children.

During foraging activities honeybees are frequently exposed to different xenobiotics, most of them are agrochemical pesticides and beehive chemicals. The understanding of synergy mechanisms between xenobiotics is very important for the control of defined mixtures use and also for the prediction of potential toxicity of newly developed substances in agriculture and apiculture. This review is focused on the effects, mechanisms and molecular targets of xenobiotics in honeybees and possible complex mechanisms of their synergisms. The majority of synergistic effects observed in honeybees were ascribed to the inhibition of detoxifying midgut enzymes P450 involved in xenobiotic metabolism. The main inhibitors of P450 enzymes are specific compounds used to prolong the effects of pesticides as well as some fungicides. Some insecticides can also interact with these enzymes and influence the xenobiotics.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed Endangered Species Act protection today for the yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus), following a 2011 agreement with the Center for Biological Diversity to speed protection decisions for 757 imperiled species nationwide. “The decline of the cuckoo across the West is a symbol of the tragic decline of our rivers,” said Noah Greenwald, the Center’s endangered species director. “With just a little more care, we can restore those rivers — not just for cuckoos and hundreds of other animals and plants, but for people too.” Once common from the shores of Lake Washington in Seattle to the mouth of the Colorado River, today it can be found in only a handful of locations: portions of the Sacramento and Kern Rivers in California, the Colorado, Verde and San Pedro rivers in Arizona, the Gila and Rio Grande rivers in New Mexico and scattered locations in Colorado, Nevada and Utah. “The petition to protect yellow-billed cuckoos was the first I ever worked on, back in 1998,” said Greenwald. “I had no idea then that getting protection for this severely imperiled songbird would take 15 years, but I’m glad it finally has a great chance of recovering.”

A FLY which has apparently never ventured beyond a tiny strip of an east Highland beach could be facing extinction, scientists warn. Fonseca's seed fly is on the nation's Biodiversity Action Plan but a paper by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) highlights just how limited the insect's world is thought to be. Experts believe the fly, Botanophila fonsecai, is restricted to a 328-feet long strip of land on the north shore of the Dornoch Firth. The population is small and is subject to environmental changes, while its beach habitat is frequently being trampled by humans taking part in recreational activities on the beach. "Consequently, B. fonsecai is particularly susceptible to extinction," SNH scientists say.

Researchers with Friends of the Earth US and the Pesticide Research Institute say that more than half of the nursery plants studied contained residues of “neonicotinoid” pesticides, a substance increasingly thought to be contributing to mass die-offs of global honey-bee populations. “At the levels observed in our report, the high percentage of contaminated plants and concentrations suggest this problem is widespread,” Lisa Archer, a co-author of the new report and director of Friends of the Earth US’s food and technology program, told Inter Press Service (IPS). “Unfortunately, too many home gardeners have likely become a source of exposure to pesticides that have been shown to harm, weaken and kill bees. It’s pretty shocking that consumers who may be purchasing these plants specifically to help bees could, in fact, be poisoning them.”

The finding raises questions about the adequacy of voluntary conservation measures proposed today for the rare grouse in a final rangewide conservation plan intended to preclude the need for Endangered Species Act protections. The study, by Western EcoSystems Technology Inc. of Laramie, Wyo., estimates the total population size at 17,616 individuals in 2013, more than a 50 percent drop from the 2012 estimate of 34,440 birds. The study also estimated there to be 2,036 occupied breeding areas (known as leks) in 2013 — a decline of more than 30 percent from the 2012 estimate of 2,930 leks. Lesser prairie chickens (Tympanuchus cupido) have been on the waiting list for federal protection since 1998. The species was proposed for listing as a result of a 2011 settlement between conservation groups and the Fish and Wildlife Service to speed protections for hundreds of species around the country.

Responding to a 2001 petition from the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today denied Endangered Species Act protection to the Kittlitz’s murrelet (Brachyramphus brevirostris), an Alaskan seabird. “The Kittlitz’s murrelet is one of America’s most imperiled birds, but federal officials have decided not to save the species from extinction,” said Shaye Wolf, the Center’s climate science director. “It’s tragic that our government has denied protection to this clearly endangered seabird, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of drastic population declines.” The Kittlitz’s murrelet — also known as the “glacier murrelet” — forages in coastal waters near glacier outflows, where its fish and zooplankton food is abundant. The number of birds has declined by 80 percent to 90 percent in recent decades in core areas from Glacier Bay to Prince William Sound. In its listing analysis, the Service concluded that Kittlitz’s murrelets in Alaska experienced a large-scale decline of 30 percent per year between 1989 and 2000 and likely have continued to decline at a slower rate since 2000. The Center submitted a petition in 2001 to list the Kittlitz’s murrelet under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. In 2004 the Service determined that the Kittlitz’s murrelet warranted protection but was “precluded” from listing, putting this species on a long waiting list for protection. In 2011 the Center and the Service reached a landmark agreement that ensures that all the species on the federal waiting list for protection as of 2010 get decisions within the next four years. Today’s decision resulted from this agreement.

Karen Hudes is a graduate of Yale Law School and she worked in the legal department of the World Bank for more than 20 years. In fact, when she was fired for blowing the whistle on corruption inside the World Bank, she held the position of Senior Counsel. She was in a unique position to see exactly how the global elite rule the world, and the information that she is now revealing to the public is absolutely stunning. According to Hudes, the elite use a very tight core of financial institutions and mega-corporations to dominate the planet. The goal is control. They want all of us enslaved to debt, they want all of our governments enslaved to debt, and they want all of our politicians addicted to the huge financial contributions that they funnel into their campaigns. Since the elite also own all of the big media companies, the mainstream media never lets us in on the secret that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way that our system works.

The plain-pouched hornbill, or Aceros Subruficollis, is one of dozens of species in the hornbill family. Hornbills are typically found in various tropical and subtropical forests in Africa and Asia, but they are an icon for this Southeast Asian nation of 29 million people. The plain-pouched hornbill, which is similar in size to a medium-sized eagle, plays a key role in the ecosystem by dispersing the seeds of various forest fruits. Their decline in the Belum-Temengor forest reserve is similar to their steep falloff in Myanmar. The bird was relatively common and abundant in Myanmar, but there have been no recent recorded sightings, and it appears to have undergone a rapid decline in at least one area in the country. The Malaysian Nature Society has been monitoring seasonal migration movements since 2004, logging a maximum count of 3,261 plain-pouched hornbills in Belum-Temengor. Subsequent counts have been much lower, numbering fewer than 1,000 birds.