Food Chain Restoration: Recovering Monarch and Bee Populations in the Face of Climate Change and Herbicides

Because of dramatic declines in monarch butterfly, honey bee and bumblebee populations in North America, some ecologists and farmers are concerned that the risk of "food web collapse" is becoming more probable in insect-pollinated fruit, vegetable and forage crops in North America. To achieve "food chain restoration" of sufficient magnitude to avert the "extinction of ecological relationships" involving migratory and center-foraging pollinators, a broad array of stakeholders must be engaged in supporting on-farm habitat restoration and population recovery to ensure food security. The Make Way for Monarchs Alliance and Borderlands Restoratiion L3C are but two of many organizations now attempting to build broader partnerships for collaborative conservation of pollinator habitat in working landscapes west of the Mississippi. Our strategies for designing and maintaining hedgerows, filter strips and other pollinator habitat in the face of climate change will be highlighted.

Speaker: Gary Nabhan, University of Arizona Southwest Center

Room: Morgan Lounge