Pollinators, allies of humanity

In Mexico, there are nearly 10,000 species of pollinators, including bees, wasps, bumblebees, ants, butterflies, moths, hummingbirds, and bats. The existence of more than 20,000 plants depends on them, and on those plants, we depend.

Although the best-known pollinators are honeybees, there are more than 2,000 native bees in Mexico, including the stingless bees known as meliponas or solitary bees.

In southern and central Mexico, meliponas are particularly valuable for several reasons: their honey has medicinal properties, they are easier to raise because they have no stingers, they are an increasingly robust source of income for some communities, and they are part of the ancestral culture of the Mayan, Totonac, and Nahuatl peoples.

Despite our dependence on pollinators, we have pushed them to the brink of extinction. More than 40% of bees and butterflies are at risk of extinction; and this doesn't include many species on which little research has been done.

What has put them at this risk? The expansion of towns, cities, and agricultural activities that eliminate native vegetation; the indiscriminate use of highly toxic pesticides on agricultural crops, in home gardens, and in urban green spaces; and the increase in pests that attack them and the changes in temperature and rainfall patterns generated by climate change, also caused by our species.

More than 80% of the products we consume come from the action of these organisms. In Mexico, approximately 236 plants are cultivated, and 171 depend on pollinators. This dependence is so great, and the decline of these organisms so serious, that many large crops lease pollination services to beekeepers who raise honeybees and now also bumblebees.

One of the projects promoted in Mexico City when current President Sheinbaum was head of government was the creation of a network of 1,030 pollinator gardens that included the training of nearly 1,000 women specialists in the creation and maintenance of these types of plants: "gardens for life," they called themselves, "pollinating women."

These gardens and Mexico City's revegetation efforts showed that it is possible to reverse trends: the number of pollinators increased, as did the record of species that had not been seen for many years, such as the long-nosed bat, the black-throated hummingbird, and the dull hummingbird.

Another effort that will help these organizations recover is the extremely important decree being prepared by SEMARNAT and SADER, which will ban 35 high-risk pesticides and introduce regulations for controlling aerial spraying.

Added to this progress is the work to restore the country's forests, mangroves, and jungles, thereby returning them to nature and to pollinators: conditions, shelter, and food for them to live, and thus for us to live as well.

* The author is Undersecretary of Biodiversity and Environmental Restoration, Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, Government of Mexico.

X: mroblesg