Episode 53: Pollinators with Rob Davis (Center for Pollinators in Energy), Kevin Hackett (NativeEnergy), and Elysa Hammond (Clif Bar & Company)
Photo by Rob Davis
We run a family-friendly podcast here at Sustainability Defined, but in this episode, we’re going to talk about sex. Plant sex, to be precise. Pollinators play a critical role in moving pollen from male to female parts of the flower so the plant can reproduce. Without pollinators to help plants reproduce, we wouldn’t have all sorts of food and products that we enjoy daily, our ecosystems would be severely harmed, and we wouldn’t have all those pretty flowers to look at. The world of pollinators is huge; we’re guessing many of you listeners think of bees when you think pollinators, but there’s actually more than 200,000 species of animals around the world that act as pollinators. We’re going to talk in this episode about why these pollinators are important, what’s threatening so many of them, and what you can do to help them. We also talk with THREE awesome experts about pollinator-friendly habitat at renewable energy sites: Kevin Hackett (NativeEnergy), Rob Davis (Center for Pollinators in Energy), and Elysa Hammond (Clif Bar & Company). After all, what do you get when you combine pollinator-friendly habitats and renewable energy? Our favorite thing - a win-win!
This episode is sponsored by NativeEnergy.
Learn more about the natural environment here!
Episode Intro Notes
What We Will Cover
What do pollinators do?
Who are pollinators?
Why are pollinators important?
How many pollinators are there and what are the threats to them?
What efforts exist to help pollinators?
What can listeners do to help pollinators?
Background on our interviewees
what do pollinators do?
A pollinator is any animal that transfers pollen grains from flower to flower. They transfer the pollen grains as they drink nectar, feed off of the pollen, or do other activities.
Yes, even plants can have “sex” as pollination is usually an unintended result of a pollinator transferring pollen grains from the male part of the plant, the anther, to the female part of the plant, the stigma. Once the pollen is successfully transferred, seeds or fruits can develop and the flower can reproduce.
who are pollinators?
Birds, bats, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, wasps, certain small mammals, and most importantly, bees are pollinators. We’d be here a while if we rattled all of them off. There are approximately 200,000 different species of animals around the world that act as pollinators.
Of these, about 1,000 (or 0.5%) are vertebrates, such as birds, bats, and small mammals, and the rest are invertebrates, including flies, beetles, butterflies, moths, and bees.
Bees often get a lot of the credit but non-bee pollinators are important too. One global study found that non-bees perform 25 to 50 percent of flower visits.
why are pollinators important?
Somewhere between 75% and 95% of all flowering plants on the earth need pollinators to help with pollination. So, without pollinators, humans and wildlife wouldn’t have much to eat or look at since most all flowers would not survive.
Not all plants and crops require animal-mediated pollination. For example, wheat is wind-pollinated. But, pollinators provide their (free!) pollination services to over 180,000 different plant species and more than 1200 crops.
That’s nearly 75 percent of crops worldwide.
How does all this pollination relate to you?
First for you foodies out there, one out of every three bites of food you eat is there because of pollinators.
Without pollinators, it’d be difficult to get the variety of vitamins and minerals that we need to stay healthy.
For example, antioxidants, including several forms of vitamin E and more than 90% of the available vitamin C, are provided by crops that are pollinated by bees and other animals.
If you’re more of a finance person than a foodie, we’ve got a stat for you too. Every year, pollinators add $24 billion to the U.S. economy and $217 billion to the global economy.
Those economic benefit numbers don’t include the indirect products of plants, such as milk and beef from cows fed on alfalfa, or medicinal products like morphine and aspirin that are derived from plants that depend on bees for pollination.
And now, one that should resonate with all listeners because we all care about the environment. Pollinators support healthy ecosystems that clean the air, stabilize soils, prevent erosion, protect from severe weather, and support other wildlife.
Oh yeah, plus all the flowers that pollinators enable are beautiful to look at.
This includes my girlfriend’s favorite flower--sunflowers!
Listeners should also note that it’s not just about increasing the overall number of pollinators but making sure all pollinators survive and thrive because many plants have developed characteristics to attract particular pollinators. If certain pollinators decline, it threatens many plants, and vice versa. Hummingbirds, for example, see red very well but have no sense of smell. Plants that attract hummingbirds are red, nearly odorless, and have petals that dust the hummingbird’s head and back with pollen as it hovers above the flower to sip nectar.
what are the threats to pollinators?
As discussed, there are about 200,000 different species of pollinators around the world. That sounds like a lot but pollinator populations are declining due to increasing threats.
Let’s first get a sense of the amount of decline in pollinator populations.
Significant amounts of honey bee colonies are lost each year. The Bee Informed Partnership surveys thousands of beekeepers managing hundreds of thousands of bee colonies each year. During the 2019-2020 winter, an estimated 22.2% of all managed honey bee colonies in the U.S. were lost, and the historic average for the survey is 28.6%.
The problem is particularly bad for native, unmanaged species. At least 28% of North America’s bumble bees have undergone significant declines, including species that were formerly common and widespread.
In 2017, the rusty patched bumble bee, which has disappeared from 87% of its historic range, became the first bumble bee to be listed as an endangered species.
Butterflies in the U.S. have also undergone significant declines: 19% are at risk of extinction.
The iconic monarch butterfly, for example, has experienced declines of 74–80% in populations both east and west of the Rocky Mountains.
What are the threats to pollinators? Honestly, there’s too many to list here but let’s discuss some of the largest.
One threat is the loss in feeding and nesting habitats or degradation of these habitats due to a change in land use for agriculture, resource extraction, or urban and suburban development.
You could try to re-flower but many of these pollinator species are “habitat specific” and thus they can’t forage, nest, or overwinter in a new place easily.
Another habitat-related issue is that certain plants or animals brought here from other places can decrease the quality of pollinator habitats. They often crowd out the wildflowers needed for pollination and attract pollinators away from native species.
A second threat is pesticide misuse and drift from aerial spraying.
One example is neonicotinoids (neonics) that are a class of insecticides that can affect the central nervous system of insects, resulting in paralysis and death. Check out episode 3 on neonics for more information.
Yet another threat is parasites and diseases.
Key parasites and diseases affecting honey bees include Varrora mites, Hive Beetle, and Colony Collapse Disorder.
The varrora mite has been considered the greatest single driver of the global honey bee health decline. These mites feed on the fat body tissue of bees, often in the process transferring diseases including a lethal one that deforms wings, preventing bees from flying.
And last, there is of course, sadly, Climate change. As the temperature changes, plants are migrating and changing their blooming patterns, all of which upsets the delicate balance between pollinators and plants.
Here’s a striking example: Climate change is making flowers bloom half a day earlier each year. This means that plants are now blooming a month earlier than 45 years ago. Plants blooming earlier means some pollinators and plants may miss each other.
what efforts exist to help pollinators?
We of course have to talk about the best week of the year--National Pollinator Week!
In 2007, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved and designated a week in June called "National Pollinator Week."
The Pollinator Partnership was the driving force behind the national week designation and has led the charge on it ever since.
Speaking of the Pollinator Partnership, it’s the largest 501(c)(3) dedicated exclusively to the health, protection, and conservation of all pollinating animals.
Pollinator Partnership’s actions for pollinators include education, conservation, restoration, policy, and research. A lot of the info for these intro notes came from their website.
Pollinator Partnership also spearheads a cool collaborative effort to help pollinators called the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC). NAPPC is a body of more than 160 diverse partners, including respected scientists, researchers, conservationists, government officials, and dedicated volunteers.
One accomplishment of the NAPPC is 31 web-based eco-regional planting guides for all regions of the U.S. to prepare the way for healthy pollinator-friendly landscapes across millions of farms, homes, schools, parks and corporate landscapes. Go online, enter your zip code, and you can find your local planting guide. More to come in our next section on what you can do to help pollinators.
The NAPPC is focused on pollinators generally, but there are also efforts focused on particular pollinators.
One example is the Monarch Joint Venture, a partnership of federal and state agencies, non-governmental organizations, businesses, and academic programs, working together to protect the monarch migration across the U.S.
Businesses have also acted to save pollinators, in part because many of their products depend on a thriving pollinator population
For example, more than a decade ago Haagen-Dazs launched the Haagen-Dazs Loves Honey Bees initiative. Through the initiative, more than one million dollars has been donated to pollinator education and Haagen-Dazs grows its crops in a way that supports bee populations.
There’s also the fantastic work that NativeEnergy is doing in collaboration with a variety of businesses to build renewable energy projects in a way that, thanks to a partnership with pollinator expert Rob Davis, also create more pollinator habitat. How? Well by creating pollinator-friendly solar where the pollinator-friendly ground cover is placed under and around solar arrays instead of using turf grass or gravel. It’s a solar design that is comparable in cost while providing meaningful benefits to agriculture and ecosystems. In short, it’s our favorite, a win-win, this time for conservation and clean energy.
Native Energy has worked with Clif Bar, Lush Cosmetics, Lime Bikes, Stonyfield, DesignTex and others on these renewable energy/pollinator projects. Rob Davis explains more in his Ted talk “This Unlikely 1960s Space Tech Can Help Save the Bees,” and we’ll learn more about these projects in our interview coming up in just a bit.
What can listeners do to help pollinators?
A lot! Here’s a list of what you can do.
Plant pollinator-friendly plants in your garden
For example, you could put in plants that have hollow stems that bees can hang out in during the winter. These include raspberry brambles, coneflowers, and elderberries.
You could also plant milkweed plants, which monarchs rely on to thrive and continue their migration and generational cycles.
Reduce pesticide use--yes, even organic ones.
If you are going to spray them on your plants, spray in the evening after pollinators have stopped flying.
Support local bees and honey keepers.
Look for the Bee Better Certified seal. It indicates that certified ingredients were grown in ways that support bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. When you buy Bee Better Certified products, it directly benefits farms that prioritize pollinator conservation.
Learn more, as well as reach out to friends and family and share on social media to inform and inspire others to act
One short video you can watch to learn more is the seven minute Ted Talk from Louie Schwartzberg titled “The Hidden Beauty of Pollinators.” It’s a riveting presentation, and we guarantee the images will evoke audible “whoas.”
Our researcher Shannon Parker suggests an episode of the Netflix Docuseries Rotten called Lawyers Guns, & Honey. It talks about supply chain issues with honey. We haven’t talked too much about the commercial side of managing and providing needed pollinators to farmers across the country, but this episode gets into that and more.
More on our expert guests today
Rob Davis is currently a Director at the Center for Pollinators in Energy where he helps to accelerate the nation's transition towards clean energy. His content helps provide best practices on pollinator friendly solar installation. Previously, Rob had a successful career in a variety of sectors, from tech startups to academia and more.
Kevin is currently the Client Strategy Director at NativeEnergy where, for over 15 years, he has been helping companies take action to achieve their climate ambitions, and make lasting change within their business and communities around the globe. His work spans from building new renewable energy in the U.S. (and yes, he has climbed to the top of a wind turbine) to regenerative agriculture in Argentina.
Elysa Hammond, Senior Vice President of Environmental Stewardship, Clif Bar & Company
With a background in agroecology and crop science, Elysa originally started at Cliff Bar 19 years ago as an Ecologist. Now, as Senior Vice President of Environmental Stewardship, she leads their program focused on reducing its ecological footprint from field to the final product.