USA: Petition for Saving America’s Pollinators Act

First Lady Michelle Obama has finished planting her sixth-annual White House Kitchen Garden. This year, she planted a pollinator garden to attract and support 70,000 bees already gracing the presidential lawn, as well as monarch butterflies and other pollinators.

A great step, but, what is really needed, is a ban on the toxic pesticides and herbicides that are responsible for killing off huge populations of honeybees, OCA reports. A petition was launched to tell First Lady Michelle Obama to set an example for the nation by urging the Obama Administration and Congress to support H.R. 2692, the Saving America’s Pollinators Act.

Last year, beekeepers reported losses of 40-90%, with some beekeepers losing 100% of their hives, according to OCA. Mounting scientific evidence points to the world’s most popular class of pesticides, neonicotinoids, as the key precipitator of the global bee die-off, or Colony Collapse Disorder (CDC). The European Commission has decided to ban three neonicotinoid insecticides. Top retailers in the UK as well as the city of Eugene, Oregon, has reacted to. Yet the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)continues to ignore a growing body of science and has delayed action until 2018. More information and the petition are available here .