What is Pollinator Protection?

What is Pollinator Protection?

Pollinator protection encompasses the policies, practices, and initiatives designed to conserve and restore populations of animals that transfer pollen between plants, enabling reproduction in approximately 87.5% of flowering plant species. Key pollinator groups include bees (over 20,000 species globally), butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, birds, and bats. Their conservation addresses multiple interrelated threats: habitat loss, pesticide exposure, disease, climate change, and invasive species.

Why It Matters

Pollinators underpin global food security. According to the 2016 IPBES pollinator assessment, more than 75% of leading food crop types rely at least partly on animal pollination, and pollinator-dependent crops make up 35% of global crop production by volume. IPBES valued the annual food production that relies directly on pollinators at $235-577 billion. Crops including almonds, blueberries, apples, cocoa, coffee, and vanilla are heavily or entirely pollinator-dependent—without adequate pollination, yields decline and food costs increase.

Pollinator populations are in documented decline. The same IPBES assessment found that where national or regional data exist, often more than 40% of invertebrate pollinator species, particularly bees and butterflies, are threatened locally, and about 16% of vertebrate pollinators face global extinction. U.S. beekeepers have lost about 42% of their managed colonies a year on average over the past 15 years, including a record 55.6% in 2024-25 and 39.9% in 2025-26, according to the U.S. Beekeeping Survey run by Auburn University and the Apiary Inspectors of America. Wild bee diversity has declined significantly in intensively farmed landscapes across Europe and North America. The drivers—habitat loss, pesticide exposure (particularly neonicotinoids), parasites, and climate change—operate synergistically, making the problem worse than any single factor would suggest.

Corporate exposure to pollinator decline is growing. Food and beverage companies, agricultural input manufacturers, retailers, and investors face supply chain risks from reduced pollination services. Companies like General Mills, Nestlé, and Walmart have launched pollinator protection initiatives, recognizing that their supply chains depend on a service that cannot be cost-effectively replaced at scale. U.S. growers spent more than $400 million on managed pollination (trucking honeybee hives to orchards) in 2024, 81% of it for almonds, according to USDA's Economic Research Service, and that service is itself vulnerable to colony losses.

The regulatory landscape is tightening. The EU banned outdoor use of three neonicotinoid insecticides in 2018 following EFSA risk assessments. Additional pesticide restrictions are under review. The US EPA has strengthened pollinator risk assessment requirements for pesticide registration. State-level pollinator protection plans are proliferating across the US.

How It Works / Key Components

Habitat creation and restoration provide the nesting sites, foraging resources, and overwintering sites pollinators need. Wildflower strips along field margins, hedgerow restoration, meadow creation, and urban pollinator gardens all contribute. A 2021 review in Conservation Letters (Garibaldi and colleagues) concluded that working landscapes need at least 20% native habitat to sustain pollination and other services. The UK's agri-environment schemes have demonstrated measurable pollinator recovery where habitat creation is implemented at landscape scale.

Pesticide management reduces chemical threats to pollinators. Integrated pest management (IPM) minimizes pesticide use through biological controls, cultural practices, and targeted application. When pesticides are necessary, selecting compounds with lower pollinator toxicity, applying during periods of low pollinator activity (early morning, evening), and avoiding bloom-period applications reduce exposure. Buffer zones around pollinator habitat provide additional protection.

Agricultural practices can support or undermine pollinators. Monoculture landscapes with limited floral resources between crop blooms create "food deserts" for pollinators. Diversified farming systems, cover crops, reduced tillage (protecting ground-nesting bees), and organic management all support pollinator health. Regenerative agriculture practices that rebuild soil biology and plant diversity tend to support more robust pollinator communities.

Monitoring and research programs track population trends and evaluate intervention effectiveness. Citizen science programs (Bumble Bee Watch, Great Sunflower Project) generate broad-scale data. Academic research on pollinator health, pesticide impacts, and habitat requirements informs evidence-based policy. Corporate pollinator monitoring on agricultural supply chain lands is an emerging practice.

Council Fire's Approach

Council Fire helps food and agriculture companies assess pollinator-related supply chain risks, develop pollinator protection strategies for owned and leased lands, and integrate pollinator considerations into sourcing standards and supplier engagement programs. We connect ecological requirements with business imperatives to build resilient agricultural supply chains.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why are bees dying?

No single cause—multiple stressors interact. Key factors include habitat loss (reducing food and nesting resources), pesticide exposure (particularly neonicotinoids and fungicides), parasites and disease (Varroa mite in honeybees), climate change (disrupting bloom timing and range), and nutritional stress from monoculture landscapes. These stressors compound each other.

Can technology replace pollinators?

Not at scale. Robotic pollination and hand pollination exist but are slow and expensive compared with natural pollination. In Maoxian County, Sichuan, China, where apple growers turned to hand pollination in the absence of pollinators, a 2012 study found each worker could pollinate only 5 to 10 trees a day, and many farmers were switching to crops that do not need it. For crops like almonds, which account for about 81% of U.S. pollination fees, technological replacement is economically infeasible.

What can companies do to protect pollinators?

Adopt pollinator-friendly pesticide policies across supply chains, create pollinator habitat on owned and managed lands, support supplier adoption of integrated pest management, invest in pollinator research, and report on pollinator-relevant metrics. Certification programs such as the Xerces Society's Bee Better Certified, launched in 2017, let companies source from farms that set aside pollinator habitat and use integrated pest management.