White House task force charged with saving bees from mysterious decline.

Barack Obama is taking steps save honey bees from a mysterious die-off, ordering new research into the pesticides linked to the pollinators' collapse.

The presidential memorandum released by the White House on Friday charges a new task force with producing a strategy within 180 days to stop the alarming decline of honeybees, butterflies and other pollinators.

The memorandum also for the first time directs the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to carry out research into the role of a new class of pesticides, neonicotinoids, that have been linked with the collapse of the honeybees.

However, Obama stopped short of a ban on neonicotinoids, as the European Union and some local authorites have done.

The die-off of honeybees in many countries over the last decade has caused widespread alarm because so many of the world's food crops require pollination.

The decline has been linked to loss of habitat and disease. But there is growing evidence of a direct link between neonicotinoids, the most widely used class of insectides, and colony collapse disorder.

A Harvard study last month found exposure to two of the neonicotinoids caused honeybees to leave their hives and die.

The EU banned three of the neonicotinoids for two years pending further study on their effects late last year.

The presidential memorandum, while giving pesticides top billing among “stressors leading to species declines and colony collapse disorder”, also calls for research into poor nutrition, parasites, and loss of habitat as potential causes of the die-off.

Campaign groups welcomed the White House measures – but said they did not go far enough.

Obama should have followed the example of the EU and put restrictions on pesticide use, said Tiffany Finck-Haynes, food campaigner for Friends of the Earth US.

“He could restrict neonicotinoids today as the European Union has done and he should do that if he wants to protect our pollinators, our food systems, and our environment,” said Tiffany she said.

The Centre for Food Safety in its response said: “There is already a wealth of peer reviewed literature demonstrating the harms of pesticides to bees and other pollinators.”

The Pollinator Health Task Force established of Friday is also charged with expanding habitat for honeybees of federal land or on landscaping around government buildings.

“Future landscaping projects at all Federal facilities shall, to the maximum extent appropriate, use plants beneficial to pollinators,” it said.

Meanwhile, the US Department of Agriculture said on Friday it would spend $8m to establish new habitat for honeybees in Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/20/bees-die-off-mystery-white-house-plan-save