Bees around the world are currently facing the problem of habitat decline. Bees, like many other pollinators, need to live in a habitat rich with plant diversity to ensure high rates of survival. With increasing rates of urbanization, forest degradation, and mono-crop agriculture, levels of plant diversity are shrinking on a global scale, leaving many colonies without a habitat. One of the ways that we can protect bees is by restoring and conserving the very places that they live. We can do this by preserving wildlife areas like forests. In addition to providing bees with more areas to live, conservation areas can also improve our own economies. In Central America, efforts to preserve forests surrounding coffee farms have caused crop yields to rise tremendously. Protecting forests gives bees a place to live thus allowing them to pollinate coffee-plant flowers. Increased pollination around coffee farms in Costa Rica lead to 20% greater crop yields and an average 7% increase in annual farm incomes (Chivian, 105). That being said, we should strive to protect forests around the world for the sake of bee colonies, levels of plant diversity, and farming economies.
Cited Sources:
Chivian, Eric, and Aaron Bernstein. Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.
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