Senator Mike Rounds gets credit for paying attention to this blog (you know they read Dakota Free Press in Washington) and supporting legislation to expand habitat for butterflies, bees, and other pollinators:
U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) today joined Senators Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) to introduce new, bipartisan legislation to help states create pollinator-friendly habitats along roads and highways. This legislation would help address the steep decline of pollinator populations, which poses a serious threat to American farmers and the American food supply.
“Bees play a vital role in making sure food gets on our table, acting as pollinators for approximately one-third of all agricultural products in the U.S.,” said Rounds. “Our legislation seeks to use innovation and targeted conservation practices to protect and improve bees’ natural habitat so they can continue to provide this essential service and make certain future generations of crops and plants are produced.”
Specifically, the Monarch and Pollinator Highway (MPH) Act of 2019 would establish a federal grant program available to state departments of transportation and Indian tribes to carry out pollinator-friendly practices on roadsides and highway rights-of-way [Office of Senator Mike Rounds, press release, 2019.11.20].
Rounds cites the USDA to say that 35% of the world’s crops depend on pollinators. The Fish and Wildlife Service and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations say its more like 75%. Either way, if pollinators don’t have habitat, we won’t have as much food. Support your local bees and butterflies—support Rounds’s Monarch and Pollinator Highway Act!
Need moar restrictions on where and when to use herbicides that kill all vegetation, especially milk weeds which is the only forage Monarch larvae can eat.
Hahahahahahah! and a lol to boot…. who invested in windshield wiper fluid?
i hope this works out but i think there will be a lot of push back from the spray everything crowd.
Yeah, just wait till Rounds finds out bee colonies are closed shops.
Chris is hillary-ous. Good zinger.
Mike, did you say, “Good STinger?”
😆😆😆
Any chance this bill will stop farmers from tilling and planting ditches? Hope it includes adding milkweed seeds and other wildflowers to the seed mix for ditches, medians, etc.
Roundy does a small decent thing while he and his party have been knowingly doing enormous, dirty stuff for 50+ years.
” ‘Exxon knew.’ Thanks to the work of activists and journalists, those two words have rocked the politics of climate change in recent years, as investigations revealed the extent to which giants like Exxon Mobil and Shell were aware of the danger of rising greenhouse gas emissions even as they undermined the work of scientists.
“But the coal industry knew, too — as early as 1966, a newly unearthed journal shows.”
The article isn’t paywalled or long.
is.gd/BDCn7p
Never, never, Never trust big business of any kind. EVER!
Dave, maybe we could reduce the windshield splattery by building flight bridges over the highways, clear glass half-tubes over the roads that would keep the bugs out of traffic….
The greater the windshield slope, the less the “splattery.” The new Tesla pickup will have near zero splattery. All for only $40k!
is.gd/T3lEUb
With 16 inches of clearance, the Cybertruck gives more daring bugs room to fly under the vehicle. ;-)
Maybe we can get a Green New Deal amendment to the pollinator highway plan to include public charging stations at every rest area near the new flower gardens. Stroll among the flowers, enjoy the butterflies while your car juices up!