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July 26, 2020 01:34 pm

Western Bumblebee Population Drops Up To 93% Over the Last 20 Years

The western bumblebee is one of around 30 bumblebee species in the western U.S. and Canada. Now a federal review "unveils an alarming trend for the western bumblebee population, which has seen its numbers dwindle by as much as 93% in the last two decades," reports the Associated Press:The find by the U.S. Geological Survey will help inform a species status assessment to begin this fall by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which may ultimately add the insect to its endangered species list. Tabitha Graves, senior author of the study and a research ecologist with the survey, said the trend with the western bumblebee documented between 1998 and 2018 is troubling because of their important role as pollinators... There are multiple factors at play that are contributing to the demise of the bumblebee, including pesticides, habitat fragmentation, a warming climate and pathogens, researchers say... "This bumblebee that was once very widespread and common is something that people started to see less frequently," said Diana Cox-Foster, research leader and location coordinator at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Pollinating Insects Research Unit at Utah State University. "There are localized populations where it is still happy and healthy, but there have been declines in large parts of its previous distributions. ... Asking why these declines are happening is very important."

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