The USDA Technology Support Center will hold a New England Pollinator Partnership webinar on June 15th at 1 pm EDT.
Native wild pollinators are essential to our environment and agricultural crop production. While both managed and wild bees continue to decline globally and across the U.S. at alarming rates the pollination services of native bees play an increasingly important role in food production.
Native bees and other native pollinators are also critical to pollinating important flowering plants across our forests and natural landscape providing important seeds, nuts, fruit and berries for wildlife. Wild bees themselves are also food for other animals (e.g. birds) and are a central part of the food web, biodiversity, and ecosystem health.
In the Northeast, several key pollinators have experienced drastic declines including the federally listed (endangered) rusty patched bumble bee, yellow banded bumble bee, monarch butterfly and several cuckoo bumble bees. These recent declines are attributed to a number of interacting factors including pathogens, habitat loss and degradation, exposure to harmful chemicals, and increasingly extreme weather patterns.
The New England Pollinator Partnership (NEPP) is a 25-year conservation effort to provide financial and technical assistance to participating landowners in the six states to implement conservation practices benefiting native pollinators. These conservation practices may involve establishing wildflower gardens or flowering hedgerows adjacent to pollinator dependent crops as well as managing natural habitats.
This webinar will familiarize participants with key requirements of the NEPP, and provide training on pollinator conservation in the Northeast. Emphasis will be placed on key requirements of the NEPP, geographic scope, and conservation planning for creating and protecting pollinator habitat.
To take part in this webinar, see http://www.conservationwebinars.net/webinars/the-new-england-pollinator-partnership-nepp?sr=wp~mkt-dayOf