Ways to support pollinators without building a pollinator garden
According to the NRCS, native bees are the most important pollinator in temperate North America - and the Appalachian forest region has a lot! West Virginia and Maryland are an extremely unique states because of the wide array of habitats, including river valleys, high-elevation mountains, the Appalachian mountains and fields. This means that this region provides a high diversity of flowering plants and therefore a high diversity of pollinator species. While providing habitat is extremely important, one of the best ways to support pollinators is by contributing to citizen science projects. People in the community, sometimes referred to as citizen scientists, are crucial for pollinator conservation, especially in the Appalachian forest region, where there is an abundance of native bee and butterfly species, but not enough data to have baseline population information.
Julia Derringer, an AmeriCorps serving with the Forest Service, searches for butterflies along a roadside.
Currently, there is limited information on pollinator species in this area because of a lack of field observations and published data. This provides an amazing opportunity for West Virginians and Marylandians to provide critical support for pollinator conservation! Documenting bee and other pollinator sightings in the state may result in finding new rare, threatened or endangered species and could be invaluable for scientists.
In addition to finding new species, species abundance information is important to address the recent widespread declines in native bees populations in North America. This is because scientists and conservation organizations don’t currently have baseline data on current populations, which means that it is difficult to understand the extent to which native bee populations may be in trouble. Creating a baseline for bumble bee sightings means that future researchers can then track the health of native bee populations.
One example of a recent discovery in Appalachian forest region is the rusty patched bumble bee. Currently, this bumble bee species is mainly found in Illinois, but in recent years a few have been spotted in West Virginia and a few in Maryland. This makes the region extremely important when assessing rusty patched bumble bee conservation, but there is not yet a baseline of data for where rusty patched bumble bees can be found. The US Fish and Wildlife Service has a map of rusty patched bumble bee sightings, with more and more popping up in West Virginia and Maryland!
Overall, community members are extremely important for pollinator conservation, especially in Appalachian forest region, because citizen scientists have the ability to address the lack of field data in a way that researchers cannot. The high diversity and limited documentation of pollinators in West Virginia and Maryland gives citizen scientists an extremely unique opportunity to be instrumental in the future of pollinators.
Sign up on e-Butterfly’s website to document butterfly species in your area!
In Appalachian forest region, there are a few avenues to document pollinator sightings. Here are a few of our favorite!
If you are interested in searching for bumble bees, you can create an account with the Bumble Bee Watch.
If you are interested in butterflies, you can create an account with e-Butterfly and contribute to North American monitoring efforts!
If you are specifically interested in Monarch butterfly conservation (the official butterfly of West Virginia!), the Integrated Monarch Monitoring Program has a variety of instructions and resources for how to document monarch larva and adult monarchs.
All of these are great ways to contribute to scientific understanding of pollinators in West Virginia. If you have any questions on how to get started, or want support in using these resources, feel free to reach out to pollinator@afnha.org!
