POLLINATORS AND ROADSIDES

New guidelines can help highway departments, county road

managers, and others provide habitat for pollinators.

The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation is pleased to announce the release of Pollinators and Roadsides: Managing Roadsides for Bees and Butterflies. These guidelines provide a concise overview of the conservation potential of roadside habitat and offer practical information on how to maximize the value of these areas for pollinators while meeting basic traffic safety requirements.

With more than 10 million acres of land in roadsides in the United States alone, transportation rights-of-way are a significant, yet often overlooked, resource for pollinator conservation. In landscapes denuded of natural areas by large scale agriculture or urbanization, roadsides are an increasingly important component of regional habitat networks. They frequently support native vegetation, providing refuge for wildlife and connecting fragmented habitat. The wildlife living on roadsides touches communities in every state, province, and county of North America.

Pollinators and Roadsides, synthesizes the previous study of native bees in roadside rights-of-way conducted by Jennifer Hopwood, the Xerces Society’s Midwest pollinator outreach coordinator. Jennifer’s research demonstrated that bees were twice as abundant on roadsides with native prairie vegetation than on those dominated by nonnative plants, and that native roadsides supported a third more bee species than roadsides with nonnative plants.

These findings are reinforced by studies from North America and Europe that consistently show that roadsides have a role to play in conserving bees, butterflies, and other pollinating insects. Pollinators and Roadsides draws on these studies, as well as the experience of roadside managers, to identify ways in which current maintenance practices can be adapted to benefit pollinators.

Pollinators and Roadsides is available from the Xerces Society's website, www.xerces.org.

Funding for these guidelines comes from The Ceres Foundation, CS Fund, Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund, Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin, Turner Foundation, and The Wildwood Foundation.

ABOUT THE XERCES SOCIETY

The Xerces Society is a nonprofit organization that protects wildlife through the conservation of invertebrates and their habitat. Established in 1971, the Society is at the forefront of invertebrate protection worldwide, harnessing the knowledge of scientists and the enthusiasm of citizens to implement conservation programs. To learn more about our work, please visit www.xerces.org.

PHOTO CREDIT

Prairie clover blooming in a roadside in Iowa, by Kirk Henderson.