Pollinator Decline - Consequences

Consequences

The value of bee pollination in human nutrition and food for wildlife is immense and difficult to quantify.

It is commonly said that about one third of human nutrition is due to bee pollination. This includes the majority of fruits, many vegetables (or their seed crop) and secondary effects from legumes such as alfalfa and clover fed to livestock.

In 2000, Drs. Roger Morse and Nicholas Calderone of Cornell University, attempted to quantify the effects of just one pollinator, the Western honey bee, on only US food crops. Their calculations came up with a figure of US $14.6 billion in food crop value.

There has not been sufficient study to quantify the effects of pollinator decline on wild plants and wild life that depend on them for feed. Some plants on the endangered species list are endangered because they have lost their normal, native pollinators because of displacement by invasive honey bees. Honey bees are not native to the Western Hemisphere, so the loss of honey bees may not represent a threat to native plants; the role of honey bees in the Western Hemisphere is almost exclusively agricultural. To the extent that honey bees compete with native bee species, a decrease in the honey bee population may be beneficial to native plants and pollinators.

Read more about this topic:  Pollinator Decline

Famous quotes containing the word consequences:

    There is a delicate balance of putting yourself last and not being a doormat and thinking of yourself first and not coming off as selfish, arrogant, or bossy. We spend the majority of our lives attempting to perfect this balance. When we are successful, we have many close, healthy relationships. When we are unsuccessful, we suffer the natural consequences of damaged and sometimes broken relationships. Children are just beginning their journey on this important life lesson.
    —Cindy L. Teachey. “Building Lifelong Relationships—School Age Programs at Work,” Child Care Exchange (January 1994)

    We are still barely conscious of how harmful it is to treat children in a degrading manner. Treating them with respect and recognizing the consequences of their being humiliated are by no means intellectual matters; otherwise, their importance would long since have been generally recognized.
    Alice Miller (20th century)

    Results are what you expect, and consequences are what you get.
    schoolgirl’s definition, quoted in Ladies’ Home Journal (New York, Jan. 1942)