OPINION — Editorial

Good news for bees

President Donald Trump and the GOP Congress have engaged in a broad regulatory rollback, hitting everything from Internet privacy standards to workplace safety rules and environmental regulations. So it is more notable than usual that one worthwhile federal regulatory initiative got through recently: The rusty patched bumblebee is being added to the endangered species list after all.

Citing “a swift and dramatic decline since the late 1990s,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service moved to list the species as endangered just before Trump’s inauguration. “Abundance of the rusty patched bumble bee has plummeted by 87 percent, leaving small, scattered populations in 13 states and one [Canadian] province,” the service warned in a Jan. 10 announcement. But the Trump administration froze all new regulations, so the listing did not come into effect on Feb. 10, as planned. Fortunately, the delay was not a long one: The first bumblebee and first bee of any type in the continental United States is now officially protected under the Endangered Species Act. That means the federal government will move to protect the bumblebees’ habitat and restrict activities that drive down their numbers.

They could use the protection. Though reports of massive die-offs and colony collapse have somewhat exaggerated the global threat bees face, the United States still has lost nearly a million honeybee colonies since 1989, when the number peaked at 3.5 million. Bees are resilient creatures, their queens capable of repopulating hives at an astonishing rate. Beekeepers have been able to fight the decline in honeybees, which humans store and truck around the country to provide honey and pollination services, through careful management. But bumblebees and other native species do not get the same sort of commercial attention.

It may not be easy to repopulate the rusty patched bumblebee. The creatures must contend with shrinking habitat, climate change and pesticide use. Even so, at least the federal government will no longer delay the effort—assuming, that is, Republicans refrain from defunding it in their next budget.

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