habitat

November's featured staff member, as both a Pollinator Conservation Specialist and our Bee Better Certified Program Coordinator, is working to transform agricultural landscapes by providing pollinator habitat and other key support for beneficial insects.

This positive case study demonstrates the possibilities for farmers interested in supporting native pollinators and reducing or eliminating pesticide use.

September’s featured staff members have been providing Monarch and Pollinator Habitat Kits to select organizations in California, training Colorado Department of Transportation staff on roadside pollinator habitat, and attending the America’s Grasslands Conference, held this year in North Dakota.

Scott Hoffman Black, executive director of the Xerces Society, encourages gardeners to increase the diversity of native plants, ensure that there are places for insects to nest, and avoid using pesticides.

August’s featured staff members conducted a successful pollinator habitat workshop in Nebraska, and have been busy building beetle banks in Iowa.

June’s featured staff share their work with partners in large-scale agriculture in central Washington, family farms in Wisconsin, and a unique urban agriculture fellowship program in Virginia.

Many Xerces Society members create wildlife gardens that are particularly hospitable to invertebrates. Here are three wonderful examples.

Collectively, urban and suburban areas have the potential of offering millions of acres of life-giving habitat to pollinators.

With Pollinator Week upon us, now is the time to reaffirm our commitment to protecting these vital invertebrates. Here are some tangible ways to help.

May’s featured staff share stories of building pollinator habitat that will also support monarchs—one project on a farm in Iowa, and the other in a park in Missouri.

April’s featured staff—all Farm Bill Pollinator Conservation Planners—are driving the adoption of cover cropping in California, guiding farmers to support pollinators in Maine, and teaching the importance of rangeland to pollinator conservation in North Dakota.

Helping the monarch back to full health isn’t going to be easy or quick, but together we can transform the landscape to allow the monarch to rebound—and give our children the gift of watching orange wings flap in the sunshine.

Earth Week is an inspiring time, brimming with opportunities to make a difference—including getting your community certified as a Bee City USA.

Please consider spending Earth Week in the garden, enjoying the diversity of insects, and taking a few of the actions outlined below to simultaneously minimize pest problems and avoid the use of pesticides.

With a robust set of requirements on pesticide use and the highest standards for protecting and restoring pollinator habitat of any food certification, Bee Better Certified represents a new era in biodiversity protection on farms.

During Earth Week 2019, we are asking you to consider taking simple, yet impactful, steps to make the world better for bees, butterflies, and other essential invertebrates.

The Xerces Society’s blog post “Picking Plants for Pollinators: The Cultivar Conundrum” highlighted the lack of research on this topic. To help address this knowledge gap, Budburst launched the Nativars research project in 2018.

After a year and a half of Bee Better Certified, we have analyzed how the standards work for the many operations that are already implementing them, and have adjusted our requirements accordingly.

Climate change will bring higher temperatures and greater extremes in weather, as well as increases in the frequency and intensity of heat waves. These variations will be exacerbated in cities in ways that may spell trouble for bees.

February’s featured staff member has been working on a hedgerow incorporating diverse native species in North Carolina. Here she reports on its progress and the interesting invertebrates sighted on the plantings!

There are many reasons to oppose the wall along the southern border—including the loss of habitat for some of our smallest and most important animals.

Jenni Denekas, Xerces' web and communications coordinator, writes, "Being assigned to create an interpretive panel for Cedaroak Park Primary School, where I attended grade school, was a special experience."

Overall, the count data revealed an average decrease of 38% between the Thanksgiving and New Year’s counts.

January’s featured staff have been working on establishing pollinator habitat in California’s Central Valley and helping farmers both navigate the ins and outs of the Endangered Species Act and provide restored habitat for native bees in Maine.

December’s featured staff hail from Iowa and Minnesota, and have been making significant impacts in their respective states by educating farmers and other members of the public, helping to restore and build new habitat, and pushing for policies that support pollinators and other beneficial insects.

Freshwater mussels play an important role in maintaining water quality in creeks. Climate change is altering water conditions, impacting the mussels and the fish on which they rely for part of their life cycle.

Most native bee species will spend the winter in the nests that their mothers provisioned. In fact, just like bears, many pollinators hibernate through the winter—and they may need a little help to survive until spring.

November’s featured staff hail from Minnesota, Indiana, and California, and have been conducting training and outreach events, helping General Mills to implement their plan to plant 3,300 acres of pollinator habitat, and monitoring farm habitat plantings in the San Joaquin Valley.

We are already observing impacts on some species that are emerging earlier or whose distributions are changing, but it is difficult to characterize how insects as a whole will be impacted: some species will benefit while most will lose out.

Oklahoma’s impressive butterfly fauna of more than 170 species includes the nation’s largest and the smallest, and representatives of all six major butterfly families.

About a third of Britain’s sixty resident butterfly species may be encountered on chalk grasslands, but it is a handful of blues—common, chalkhill, small, and Adonis—that may be most characteristic of this habitat.

The growing season may be winding down, but fall is an important time to create habitat. The work you do now will help support overwintering pollinators and the next generation of bumble bees.

October’s featured staff hail from Oklahoma, California, and Nebraska, and have been providing workshops for the public, planning pollinator habitat for arid agricultural areas, and assessing the success of pollinator plantings.

Klickitat Canyon Winery is teeming with life of many kinds, from flowers and bees to birds and spiders. The organic vineyard is working towards becoming Bee Better Certified.

Sand plains have been subjected to mining, development, and fragmentation, resulting in a loss of up to 95% of this habitat type. But these unusual environments are home to a number of rare plants and insects.

Pale Indian plantain is a plant with high ambitions—leaping to up to nine feet in height! The unusual flowers are visited by a mix of predatory wasps, which are the plant's primary pollinators and provide some of the best pest control you could ask for.

Also known as wild feverfew, this plant has a long history of medicinal use by Native Americans and the US Army. During World War I, wild quinine was used as a substitute for the bark of the Cinchona tree—as the active ingredient of quinine used to treat malaria.

It won't protect you from a snake bite, but rattlesnake master still has many virtues to recommend it.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire - but where there’s prairie smoke, there are bumble bees, buzz-pollination, and a bit of thievery.

If you’re ready to re-think your lawn, read on for practical advice and small changes that can help support pollinators and a healthier planet.

A new guide to protecting the monarch butterfly from the Pacific to the Rockies presents a holistic approach to monarch conservation.

Here are some ways you can work to promote a healthy planet for invertebrates and the people they let share their planet.

Milkweed is in demand, and that demand has been filled in recent years by tropical milkweed, a non-native species. But is planting tropical milkweed potentially doing more harm than good?

This western monarch butterfly overwintering site management plan also serves as a template for land managers at other overwintering sites.

Our Communications Director Matthew Shepherd shares stories of creating a mini wildlife sanctuary in his Portland, OR garden, and the many plant/insect interactions that have brought his family so much enjoyment in a suburban space.

Sran Family Orchards, the world’s largest grower of organic almonds, has long committed to sustainable farming, with flower-rich pollinator habitat as an integral part of the almond orchards. This investment recently paid off when Sran Family Orchards gained certification as a Bee Better Certified grower.

What are cultivars, and do they have the same benefits to pollinators as non-cultivars? The answer depends—not all cultivars are created equally.

With earlier springs and warmer fall days - pollinators need plants that provide resources at the farthest fringes of the growing season.

One of the most valuable things you can do to support pollinators and other invertebrates is to provide them with the winter cover they need in the form of fall leaves and standing dead plant material. Frequently however, this is the hardest pill for gardeners to swallow.

Neonicotinoids have been found in California’s rivers and streams at levels known to harm or outright kill aquatic invertebrates.

The Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument is unique among the BLM’s National Conservation Lands in that it is one of the most biologically diverse places in North America.

A new study from the USGS, Univ. of Arizona, and partner organizations finds 1.3 additional milkweed stems are needed in the Midwestern U.S. to recover monarch butterfly populations.

Can the nation establish a network of one million pollinator gardens within two years? Yes we can!

Recent research suggests that pollinators do better in urban environments, yet these mowed, mulched, and managed landscapes frequently lack a sufficient amount of nesting habitat needed to support large numbers of bees. As wild bees move off ag lands and head for the cities and suburbs, they may struggle to find their “dream home” amongst ours.

Last week, a butterfly found along the North Carolina coast was officially named as a new species.