CATCH THE BUZZ, THE VALUE OF BEES AND DIVERSITY
Noeleen Smyth describes how increasing the success of pollinating insects delivers benefits for farmers, horticultural growers and biodiversity simultaneously
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MAIN PHOTO: WHITE CLOVER; PHOTO 2: BOMBUS PASCUORUM ON DANDELION; PHOTO 3: CLOVER ©BURRENBEO TRUST
he news these days can be pretty depressing. Our favourite Grandad, David Attenborough, is still working away at 95, warning us on as many platforms as possible in the time he has left about the dire situation we are in. His Netflix documentary, “A life on our planet” must be watched, but have a box of Kleenex handy, as you will emerge unnerved and ready to do something positive and radical. One positive and radical action that I suggest is pretty easy is selecting pollinator friendly plants and planting for every situation. During my lifetime there has been an estimated 70% decline in the populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. One million of the animal and plant species, almost a quarter of the global total, are threatened with extinction. These losses are putting our economies, livelihoods and well-being at risk. In most instances we don’t notice what we are missing, as a particular species has not existed in our lifetime, we visit the museum and see them lined up in a stuffed array, all “dead as dodos”, the infamous extinct island bird. The passenger pigeon in North America once darkened the skies in vast numbers and took days to pass as they migrated, but today this once very notable and dominant species is shockingly extinct. Imagine the loss of such a widespread species yet most extinctions go unnoticed.
WHY SHOULD WE WORRY ABOUT SPECIES ON THE BRINK OF EXTINCTION? David Attenborough highlighted in the foreword to “The Economics of Biodiversity”review in February 2021 that “we are totally dependent upon the natural world. It supplies us with every oxygen-laden breath we take and every mouthful of food we eat…many of its natural systems are now on the verge of breakdown. “This economic review, also known as The Dasgupta Review makes for fascinating but sobering reading. For the first time we can understand the values and prices of many of the
Some available figures place a value of US$41 million on blueberry pollination services in the USA, £36.7 million for apples in the UK and €3.9 million for oilseed rape in Ireland services nature provides to us, putting the natural world and world economics firmly on the same page. Some would argue that it’s a waste of time and not realistic to put a price on nature, but there can be no doubt this is a big wake up call. The life-giving income from 'ecosystem services', such as reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, supplying fresh water, preventing floods, protecting our crops from pests and pollinating them, recycling nutrients, essential to agriculture and forestry, an unending list, according to Elrich & Elrich in 1981. The Dasgupta review states “human economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the economy of nature”, natural capital is the steady flow of income without which we can’t survive.
HOW DEPENDENT ARE WE ON NATURE AND WILD SPECIES? Many of the products we enjoy from coffee to wine and everything in between are dependent on plant and insect biodiversity. From the Dasgupta Review, a study of coffee farms in Brazil found that farms nearest to forest had a 14.6% increase in production related to pollination benefits and in South Africa, it was found that mango yields were enhanced by the addition of patches of wild native flowers in agricultural fields. One-third of the human diet in tropical countries is derived from insect-pollinated plants, which means a decline in forest-dwelling insects has an adverse effect on human nutrition. A study on pollination in Costa Rica discovered that forest-based pollinators increase the annual yield in coffee plantations within 1km from the forest edge by as much as 20%. Similar figures have yet to be replicated in Europe and Ireland but my guess is they would be comparable.
