Obama Administration Policy Announced to Protect Honeybee Habitat

Juliet Eilperin reports: "the Obama administration will announce the first National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators, a bureaucratic title for a plan to save the bee, other small winged animals and their breeding grounds."

As Eilperin explains, the plight of the bee is not honey bee is not a niche environmental concern: "While bee colonies regularly die off during winter because of stressful conditions, their sharp decline has been called a potential ecological disaster by some environmentalists and academic experts; conservative Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) described it in an interview as 'an essential thing [that] we need to pay attention to.'" Honey bees are especially critical because of their importance to many of the crops the U.S. economy depends on.

"The strategy, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, will seek to manage the way forests burned by wildfire are replanted, the way offices are landscaped and the way roadside habitats where bees feed are preserved," reports Eilperin.

The article includes more details about the decline of honeybee populations and the Obama Administrations work on the issue so far, culminating in this report.

For more information, Brad Plumer also wrote an article explaining the importance of the Obama Administration's policy. John P. Holdren also wrote an announcement of the policy for Whitehouse.gov.