Ecologists and entomologists who desire large, long term
research grants are the ones who wrote the pollinator
status report and similar conservation articles.  In essence 
they are saying there might be a crises, but we aren't sure,
so please give us grant money so we can start monitoring 
populations and study their biology.  

I see two inherent problems with that approach:

1) Loss of habitat is the obvious threat to wild pollinator
populations. During all the years the scientists want
to study and monitor, the loss of habitat will continue.  
In other words, studying and monitoring will delay taking
meaningful action to curb habitat loss.

2) If we could advance the clock 10 years to 2019 when the
scientists' 7 figure monitoring studies are complete, what then? 
At that point we are still stuck with the original problem of *how*
to *meaningfully* curb habitat loss.  Curbing habitat loss
would require curbing urban sprawl; but to date no pollinator
conservation organization has proposed legislation requiring home 
builders to build much smaller homes on much smaller lots,
which would also reduce the need to build large shopping
centers to furnish and maintain the homes.  Indeed,
the pollinator scientists themselves commonly buy large homes 
on large lots. Curbing pollinator habitat destruction would 
also require greatly reducing roadside, railroad line and crop
margin mowing and spraying. Farmers would need to be 
compensated for yield losses caused by the increased weed 
growth and some would need compensation for increased 
irrigation water costs since weeds impede ditch water flow 
and take some of the water directly. Legislation would need 
to be passed holding highway road depts and railroad companies 
immune to accident injury lawsuits caused by accidents and 
wild fires resulting from weed growth, etc.

Here again the pollinator conservation organization havn't
proposed legislation along these lines that would require the public 
or themselves to make sacrifices in their material standard of 
living, comfort and safety. Thus, even after giving the scientists 
millions to study and monitor, habitat loss would continue.

Paul Cherubini
El Dorado, Calif.

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