Honey bees and other insect pollinators are dying off at unprecedented rates and pesticides are a clear causal factor. This week and next, EPA is deciding just how "real" they think the pesticide threat to our pollinators is. In March, the Center for Food Safety joined partners and beekeepers from around the country in filing a legal petition with EPA, calling on the agency to make use of its emergency powers to protect bees from a pesticide called clothianidin that is particularly harmful to bees. In the next two weeks, we expect EPA will decide whether this threat constitutes the "imminent hazard" necessary for the agency to take emergency action to suspend registration of this toxic pesticide.
Bees and other pollinators are indicator species -- as they go, so goes the environment, and with it, us. If bees dying off en masse aren't an "imminent hazard", then we don't know what is.