Pollinator Conservation Resources: Pacific Northwest Region

(Photo: Chris Hamilton / NRCS)

Welcome to our Pollinator Conservation Resources for the Pacific Northwest! Here you'll find region-specific collections of publications, native seed vendors, and other resources to aid in planning, establishing, restoring, and maintaining pollinator habitat—as well as materials to help you learn about the species of invertebrates and native plants you might encounter. For more resources, see our Publications Library or learn about our Pollinator Conservation Program.

We also offer free pollinator habitat kits to eligible partners in Oregon and Washington! Please visit our Oregon Monarch and Pollinator Habitat Kits and Washington Bumble Bee Habitat Kit Program webpages to learn more.

Click to return to the Pollinator Conservation Resource Center home page.

Habitat Assessment

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Habitat Assessment Guide for Pollinators: Yards, Gardens, and Parks

Landscaping for pollinators is one of the easiest ways for urban, suburban, and rural residents to directly benefit local wildlife. Schoolyards, community gardens, back yards, corporate campuses, rain gardens, and neighborhood parks all have the potential to meet the most basic needs of pollinators, including protection from pesticides, and resources for foraging, nesting, and overwintering.

Habitat Assessment Guide for Pollinators: Farms and Agricultural Landscapes

This pollinator habitat assessment guide is designed for a single site on a farm or agricultural landscape.

Habitat Assessment Guide For Pollinators: Natural Areas and Rangelands

This pollinator habitat assessment guide is designed for natural areas and rangelands.

Habitat Assessment Guide for Beneficial Insects: Farms and Agricultural Landscapes

This beneficial insect habitat assessment guide is designed for a single site on a farm or agricultural landscape.

Estimated Costs to Establish Wildflower Plantings Using Chemical Fallow

This Xerces Society fact sheet provides a quick overview of the estimated costs of establishing wildflower habitat for pollinators on conventional farms.

Estimated Costs to Establish Pollinator Hedgerows

This fact sheet outlines the estimated costs of establishing hedgerow habitat for pollinators. Pollinator hedgerows are diverse linear plantings of native flowering trees, shrubs, perennial wildflowers and grasses designed to provide foraging and nesting habitat for pollinators. These estimates represent average costs of establishing hedgerows from transplants, and are derived from a series of pollinator hedgerow habitat projects throughout the United States. Actual costs vary from project to project and region to region.

Habitat Installation

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Creating Perennial Pollinator and Beneficial Insect Habitat Using Plugs

High-quality pollinator and beneficial insect habitat is usually composed of native vegetation. Providing pollen and nectar resources, host plants, overwintering and nesting opportunities, and protection from pesticides are all critical to quality habitat. Native habitat plantings can be established from seed or with live plants, also known as plugs. Plugs are a great way of establishing small-scale habitat in a variety of locations such as city parks, on farms, residential gardens, and more! The strategies outlined for plug planting in this document are broad to cover multiple regions. If establishing habitat with plugs is the method you want to use, this fact sheet will help you successfully complete your project.

Organic Site Preparation for Wildflower Establishment

Site preparation is one of the most important and often inadequately addressed components for successfully installing pollinator habitat. These guidelines provide step-by-step instructions, helpful suggestions, and regional timelines & checklists for preparing both small and large sites.

Western Oregon & Washington Conservation Cover (327) for Pollinators

These region-specific guidelines provide in-depth practical guidance on how to install and maintain nectar- and pollen-rich habitat for pollinators in the form of wildflower meadow plantings/conservation cover (NRCS Conservation Practice 327). Seed mixes and plant recommendations are included in the appendix of each guide.

Western Oregon & Washington Hedgerow Planting (422) for Pollinators

These region-specific guidelines provide in-depth practical guidance on how to install and maintain nectar- and pollen-rich habitat for pollinators in the form of linear rows of native flowering shrubs/hedgerow plantings (NRCS Conservation Practice 422). Seed mixes and plant recommendations are included in the appendix of each guide.

Establishing Pollinator Meadows from Seed
Establishing wildflower habitat for pollinators is the single most effective course of action to conserve pollinators that can be taken by anyone at any scale. These guidelines provide step-by-step instructions for establishing pollinator meadows from seed in areas that range in size from a small backyard garden up to areas around an acre.

Cover Cropping for Pollinators and Beneficial Insects

This 16-page bulletin will help you use cover crops to encourage populations of pollinators and beneficial insects on your farm while you address your other resource concerns. It begins with a broad overview of pollinator and beneficial insect ecology, then describes cover crop selection and management, how to make cover crops work on your farm, and helpful and proven crop rotations. It will also touch on the limitations of cover crops and pesticide harm reduction, among other topics.

Estimated Costs to Establish Pollinator Hedgerows

Plant Lists

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Native Plants for Pollinators and Beneficial Insects: Inland Northwest Region

This Xerces Society fact sheet features recommended native plants that are highly attractive to pollinators such as native bees, honey bees, butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds, and are well-suited for small-scale plantings in gardens, on business and school campuses, in urban greenspaces, and in farm field borders.

Native Plants for Pollinators and Beneficial Insects: Maritime Northwest Region

Native Plants for Pacific Northwest Gardens

With a focus on the Willamette Valley, this Metro booklet recommends native shrubs, trees, and herbaceous plants that are well-suited for gardens; each plant’s value to wildlife and preferred growing conditions are denoted.

Plant Species for Pollinator Habitat in the Inland Pacific Northwest

This poster, created by the USDA-NRCS Pullman Washington Plant Materials Center, lists recommended pollinator plants east of the Cascade Mountains, with detailed information on seeding rates, plant characteristics, drought tolerance, bloom time, and other attributes.

Native Plants for Willamette Valley Yards

Planting well-chosen natives can create wildlife habitat, conserve water and reduce the need for pesticides and fertilizers that can pollute local rivers and streams. Using native plants in the landscape also brings the beauty of our region’s natural areas closer to home.

Plants for Pollinators in the Inland Northwest

This NRCS Technical Note provides guidance for the design and implementation of conservation plantings to enhance habitat for pollinators. Plant species included in this document are adapted to the Inland Northwest; encompassing eastern Washington, northeastern Oregon and northern Idaho.

Native Plant Profiles and Lists

The Xerces Society has collaborated with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center to create plant lists that are attractive to native bees, bumble bees, honey bees, and other beneficial insects, as well as plant lists with value as nesting materials for native bees. These lists can be narrowed down with additional criteria such as state, soil moisture, bloom time, and sunlight requirements.

Monarch Nectar Plants: Maritime Northwest

This regional list of monarch nectar plants is geared toward gardeners, landscape designers, and land managers who are implementing small- to large-scale monarch restoration projects in coastline and coastal ranges of Washington, Oregon, and northern California; the the Cascade mountains to the east; and the Puget Trough and Willamette Valley in between.

Monarch Nectar Plants: Great Basin

This regional list of monarch nectar plants is geared toward gardeners, landscape designers, and land managers who are implementing small- to large-scale monarch restoration projects in Nevada, part of Utah, and small sections of the surrounding states of Oregon, Idaho, and California.

Monarch Nectar Plants: Inland Northwest

This regional list of monarch nectar plants is geared toward gardeners, landscape designers, and land managers who are implementing small- to large-scale monarch restoration projects in eastern Oregon and Washington into parts of western Idaho and northern Nevada.

Monarch Butterfly Nectar Plant Lists for Conservation Plantings

This set of Xerces Society guidelines is a helpful tool for ecological restoration, providing lists of plants known to support monarch adults and caterpillars.

A Guide to the Milkweeds of Oregon

A series of regional guides to the native milkweeds of North America, developed in cooperation with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service

Pollinator Cover Crops in Hazelnut Orchards

Hazelnuts are commonly grown in the Willamette Valley with bare ground underneath the orchard. Bare ground is traditionally maintained in hazelnut orchards to allow for machine harvest. Young orchards are particularly susceptible to soil erosion because of a lack of cover and tree roots to help hold the soil. Cover crops or other plantings between the rows of hazelnuts can prevent soil erosion in addition to providing benefits for soil health, water infiltration, and beneficial insect conservation. Cover crops also can reduce soil compaction and allow growers to access the orchard to make applications during moist weather.

Enhancing Pollinator Habitat in Remnant Oak Plant Communities

The preservation and restoration of oak plant communities in Wasco and eastern Hood River counties can be important for many reasons. These habitats are dominated by the Oregon white oak and ponderosa pine. Because of the historical clearing of vast areas for grazing and agriculture, only a small percentage of these oak savannas and woodlands in Oregon remain. Research conducted by Oregon State University as a part of an USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Conservation Innovation Grant and data collected by participants in the Oregon Bee Project has found that native plant habitat in remnant oak stands in Wasco County provide the most important habitat for sustaining the bee diversity in the region. These oak plant communities also serve as important habitat for other beneficial (predator and parasitoid) insects that attack crop pests.

Habitat Management

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Maintaining Diverse Stands of Wildflowers

High quality pollinator meadows sometimes experience a decline in wildflower diversity or abundance as they age. This guide provides recommendations on how to bring declining meadows back into a high quality condition.

Collecting and Using Your Own Wildflower Seed

In this document we outline the basic steps of collecting native plant seed using readily available, non-specialized equipment, as well as tips for cleaning, storing, and sharing seed to expand pollinator habitat on farms and in our communities.

Nesting & Overwintering Habitat For Pollinators & Other Beneficial Insects

This guide focuses on a variety of natural nesting habitat features that can be readily incorporated into most landscapes. Compared to artificial nesting options such as bee blocks and bee hotels, natural nesting habitat features often better mimic the natural nest site density of insects, and also break down naturally with time, limiting disease and parasite issues.

Best Management Practices for Pollinators on Western Rangelands

The Xerces Society developed these guidelines to help land managers incorporate pollinator-friendly practices into rangeland management. This publication is focused on federally managed rangelands that span the following western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.

Wild Pollinators of Eastern Apple Orchards (Second Edition)

(Note: most of the information in this booklet is relevant to apple production in the Pacific Northwest region)
This book includes a photo guide to bees most important to apple production in the East, steps to conserving wild bee populations, plant recommendations to enhance habitat, summary of bee toxicities for commonly used orchard pesticides, and links to additional information. Note: most of the information in this booklet is relevant to apple production in the Pacific Northwest region.

Roadside Best Management Practices that Benefit Pollinators

These best management practices provide concrete steps that can be taken by any roadside management agency to improve roadside vegetation for pollinators. The BMPs cover management of existing habitat, including ways to modify the use of mowing and herbicides to enhance roadsides, and methods to incorporate native plants and pollinator habitat into the design of new roadsides.

Roadside Habitat For Monarchs: Monarch Butterflies, Weeds, and Herbicides

Roadsides provide more than just milkweed. They can also provide diverse nectar sources to feed adult monarchs and other pollinators—but ensuring that roadsides can continue to provide the best habitat requires some thought and care. This guide highlights best management practices to reduce the impacts of herbicides on monarchs.

Western Monarch Management Windows: Timing Management in Monarch Breeding Habitat:

Based on the best available data for when and where monarchs breed in the West, we have developed regionally appropriate monarch breeding habitat management windows, when management activities are least likely to have negative effects on monarchs.

Farming with Soil Life: A Handbook for Supporting Soil Invertebrates and Soil Health on Farms

This guide focuses on the diverse, often overlooked, and essential living species that we know best: the major invertebrates (macrofauna and mesofauna) found in temperate agricultural soils. There is a focus on North America in the groups of organisms and the soil health practices that are covered, but many groups are present in these soil types around the world, and the same management principles apply. Larger soil animals, such as ground beetles, woodlice, and springtails, and their many companions, have received less attention than soil microbes in recent years.

Pesticide Protection

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Guidance to Protect Habitat from Pesticide Contamination: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Pollinator Habitat

This Xerces Society guidance document was designed to help growers, land managers, and others safeguard pollinator habitat from harmful pesticide contamination. It includes information on selecting habitat sites, as well as ways to maintain clean habitat by limiting and carefully managing pesticide use.

Protecting Bees from Pesticides in Oregon Cherry Orchards

Good pollination is critical to Oregon tree fruit production. Managed honey bees and native bees living around orchards, including bumble bees, mason bees, and mining bees, are important pollinators of commercial cherries and other fruit crops. Maintaining abundant, diverse, and healthy pollinator populations is critical for pollination success and setting a large, marketable crop of cherries. Growers can take steps to support pollinators in and around orchards by providing habitat and using a combination of management and mitigation strategies to reduce pollinator exposure to pesticides.

Smarter Pest Management: Protecting Pollinators at Home

Most of North America’s native bee species only forage over a distance of a few hundred yards, so with a little planning, your yard can provide a safe space for bees and other pollinators to thrive. All you need to give them are flowering plants throughout the growing season, undisturbed places to nest, and protection from pesticides. This Xerces Society guide will help you with the last item, managing yard pests in a pollinator-friendly way.

Smarter Pest Management: Pollinator Protection for Cities and Campuses

This Xerces Society fact sheet introduces to city and campus land managers the concept of integrated pest management (IPM), a system that emphasizes prevention first and seeks to eliminate the underlying causes of plant diseases, weeds, and insect problems rather than relying on routine use of pesticides.

Buying Bee-Safe Plants
Creating a welcoming home for local pollinators in your home garden or city park habitat is reason enough to choose plants free from harmful pesticide residues. Nurseries are more likely to make investments in pollinator-friendly production if their customers make it clear this is what they want. Our guide, Buying Bee-Safe Plants, covers four ways to help you find plants that are safe for bees, and includes tips and questions to use at the nursery.

Offering Bee-Safe Plants: A Guide for Nurseries

Three core elements of pollinator-friendly growing include using non-chemical methods to prevent and manage pests, monitoring of pest pressure, and limiting risk to pollinators if pesticides are used. These concepts are rooted in integrated pest management and are familiar to most growers. Offering Bee-Safe Nursery Plants: A Guide for Nurseries explains these concepts further and was created for wholesalers and retailers to explore, encourage, and implement pollinator friendly pest-management in the nursery business.

Protecting Pollinators from Pesticides: Fungicide Impacts on Pollinators

From large farms to small backyard gardens, many people use fungicides to control plant pathogens. While insecticides have long been recognized as a threat to bees and other beneficial insects, fungicides have generally been assumed to be relatively harmless. Though most fungicide exposures won’t kill a bee immediately, a growing body of research suggests that some fungicides can cause subtle yet significant harm. This Xerces Society fact sheet delves into how these impacts on pollinators occur, and offers mitigation measures and alternative pest management strategies.

How to Reduce Bee Poisoning from Pesticides

This detailed guide, produced jointly by the extension services of Oregon State University, Washington State University, and the University of Idaho, offers guidance on how to select and apply insecticides. Extensive tables list the toxicity to bees of dozens of chemicals and how long after application they remain hazardous to bees in the field.

Protecting Bees from Neonicotinoids in Your Garden

Neonicotinoids are a group of insecticides that are used widely on farms, as well as around our homes, schools, and city landscapes. This Xerces Society brochure explains why they are a risk to bees, gives examples of neonicotinoid garden products, and gives some simple tips for protecting bees from these insecticides.

How Neonicotinoids Can Kill Bees: The Science Behind the Role These Insecticides Play in Harming Bees

In this Xerces Society report, we present an overview of research that clearly documents neonicotinoid impacts on bees. The report also covers what can be inferred from existing research, and identifies knowledge gaps that will need to be filled to allow for better-informed decisions about the future use and regulation of these chemicals.

Beyond the Birds and the Bees: Effects of Neonicotinoid Insecticides on Agriculturally Important Beneficial Insects

This Xerces Society report details potential negative impacts of neonicotinoid insecticides on important beneficial insects. It also makes recommendations on how we can better protect important beneficials like beetles and wasps.

Organic Pesticides: Minimizing Risks to Pollinators and Beneficial Insects

These Xerces Society guidelines provide a brief overview of how to select and apply pesticides for organic farm operations while minimizing pollinator mortality. Many of the practices outlined here for protecting pollinators also can help to protect beneficial insects such as parasitoid wasps and flies; predaceous wasps, flies, and beetles; ambush and assassin bugs; lacewings; and others. The presence of these insects can further reduce pest pressure and the need for chemical treatments.

Common Organic-Allowed Pesticides: A Comparative Overview

Intended as a companion document to Organic Pesticides: Minimizing Risks to Pollinators and Beneficial Insects, this fact sheet is intended to be a quick reference to help you select and use organically-approved pesticides with the least impact on bees and other beneficial insects.

Supporting Ecologically Sound Mosquito Management: Protecting Pollinators from Pesticides

This Xerces Society fact sheet provides a brief overview of mosquito management methods that protect both people and pollinators, plus two case studies in effective mosquito management.

IPI Database

The IPI database contains summaries of research articles on pesticides, their effects on invertebrates, and pesticide movement in the environment. Articles have been reviewed and summarized to highlight key findings by Xerces Society staff.

Preventing or Mitigating Potential Negative Impacts of Pesticides on Pollinators Using Integrated Pest Management and Other Conservation Practices

Agronomy Technical Note No. 9.

Identification & Monitoring Resources

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Maritime Northwest Community Science Monitoring Guide

These guidelines were developed to assist with surveying and monitoring for native bee and butterfly diversity and abundance. The guide includes a straightforward sampling protocol that can be conducted with minimal training and time, and includes guidance on identifying different groups of bees and butterflies.

15 Butterflies and Moths to Expect in Portland

This pocket guide lists fifteen common species around the Portland metro area, created in partnership between the Xerces Society and Portland Parks and Recreation.

Pocket Guide to Identifying the Bees of Portland

This pocket guide lists common species in the Portland metro area, created in partnership between the Xerces Society and Portland Parks and Recreation.

Pocket Guide to Identifying the Western Bumble Bee

A full color print-and-fold guide to the Western bumble bee (Bombus occidentalis), a formerly common species believed to be in decline. Includes images of similar looking species.

Bumble Bees of the Western United States:

This US Forest Service guide provides information to identify 30 bumble bee species found from the west coast to the Rocky Mountains.

Native Seed & Plant Suppliers

Suppliers

Buying Bee-Safe Plants

Our guide, Buying Bee-Safe Plants, covers four ways to help you find plants that are safe for bees, and includes tips and questions to use at the nursery. Check out our Bee-Safe Nursery Plants webpage for more information.

Native Plant, Seed, and Services Directory

The Native Plant, Seed, and Services Directory is a searchable database tool to find suppliers of native plants, native seeds, and related services. This includes businesses, organizations, and networks in Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

Milkweed Finder

As part of our Project Milkweed, we have created this comprehensive national directory of milkweed plant and seed vendors to help you find sources of seed. To learn more about monarch butterflies and how you can participate in conservation efforts, please visit the Xerces Society’s Monarch Butterfly Conservation page or the Monarch Joint Venture webpage.

Seed Mixes

Pollinator Conservation Seed Mixes

The Xerces Society partners with the native seed industry to produce wildflower seed mixes that meet Xerces specifications and provide foraging and nesting resources for a diversity of pollinators. This is a searchable database tool to find pollinator-friendly seed mixes by region or state.

Seed Mix Calculator Template Spreadsheet

This template spreadsheet will help you design your own seed mix.

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A map showing the Pacific Northwest Region: British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. The map is dark pink/magenta.

Pollinator-Friendly Parks

To support the work being done by park managers across the country, the Xerces Society has recently released Pollinator-Friendly Parks: Enhancing Our Communities by Supporting Native Pollinators in Our Parks and Other Public Spaces.

Pacific Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas

The Pacific Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas is a collaborative, regional community science project aimed at tracking and conserving native bumble bees in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Participants adopt a grid cell, survey for bumble bees, and submit data online to help guide conservation efforts in the region.

Bumble Bee Watch

Bumble Bee Watch is a collaborative effort to track and conserve North America’s bumble bees. Everyone is invited to contribute to this important community science effort. Have fun while learning more about bumble bees and the vital role they play in our environment!

Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper

The Western Monarch Milkweed Mapper is part of a collaborative effort to map and better understand monarch butterflies and their host plants across the Western U.S. Your help is critical to the success of this project!

Bee Better Certified

Bee Better Certified™ partners with farmers and food companies to conserve bees and other pollinators in agricultural lands. The Bee Better Certified seal identifies and celebrates farmers and businesses that adopt farm management practices that support pollinators, and gives consumers confidence that their purchasing decisions benefit pollinators and the farmers working to protect them.

Bee City & Bee Campus USA

The Bee City & Bee Campus USA programs endorse a set of commitments for creating sustainable habitats for native pollinators, which are vital to feeding the planet. Learn more how to make your town or campus better for bees today!