I said:

>> There is no doubt that these bumblebees are
>> extinct due solely to the efforts of the
>> "native pollinator" lobby

Gavin said:

> Can I express some doubt?!  
> That argument seems a little contrived.  
> Here are some possible culprits:

> - anyone who ever converted the wild lands...
> - anyone who built on those lands
> - anyone who contributed to a subtle change in climate
> - anyone spraying (oops, sorry!) pesticides...

While it is true that these factors are valid 
contributors to the bumblebee problems in the 
>> UK <<, none of the above had any impact at
all on the bumblebee species at issue in the US.  
They were doing fine and living in substantial 
numbers far away from the agricultural areas 
until what you called the "coup de grace", and
far away from the effects of everything you listed,
(except for the global warming, which doesn't have 
any impact on bees, which are happy in a wide range
of climates and temperature ranges). 

> the final coup de grace... permitting, encouraging, 
> organizing and delivering pathogen-infested imported 
> commercial bumble bees

There was no problem with these specific species in the 
US until the arrival of the "pathogen-infested imported 
commercial bumble bees". Read the reports I cited, and 
read the news reports.  

> Like CCD in honeybees, the loss of these species (something
> that I greatly regret) is likely to be multi-factorial and 
> complex.  

In the UK, you have a different set of problems, as you have 
different bumblebees, and your bumblebees have been exposed
to the European version of bumblebee Nosema for quite some 
time.  But in the US, It was a simple tale of a single 
pathogen being imported across an ocean that would have 
otherwise been an insurmountable barrier, and a pathogen
species jump that simply would not had happened if not for
the high-density raising of the native US species of 
bumblebees in the same area where they had a nosema problem
in the high-density raising of their European species of
bumblebees that they sold elsewhere.

It was a "toxic spill".  A for profit-company shipped a
contaminated product to the US, and let it "spill" all
over, thereby contaminating the landscape.  While one
could blame the greenhouse owners for allowing the
imported bumblebees to escape, it should be obvious that
there is no such thing as perfect containment in a 
greenhouse.  APHIS should have looked at a few working
greenhouses before allowing the imports, and this
"Andromeda Zone For Bumblebees" could have been avoided.

Or, to further simplify, it was all about greed on the part
of companies who sell bumblebees, combined with a childlike 
Disneyfied misunderstanding on the part of the "alternative 
pollinator" crowd of the risks of uninspected imports and 
their stubborn insistence that NATIVE species of bumblebees 
be used in agriculture.

> It is also likely to be something we should all learn from, 

Yes!  And the lesson is that biosecurity is the only part of
"homeland security" we need to fund and enhance.  I travel 
internationally quite a bit, and I get far more scrutiny 
than any of these imports would ever get.

> and even gives reason to build bridges and collaborate with 
> people interested in conserving Apidae.

Sure, but here in the US, we have massive corporate interests
who pose as "farmers", but are better-described as 
"agribusiness".  First, you have to wrap your head around 
just how much money is in play:

The UK's total land area is about 243,000 square kilometers 
(59,520,000 acres).  The current amount of active farmland
in the US is 938,280,000 acres.  So the US farms the 
equivalent of 15 UKs, and another 22 UKs are not farmed.

Several of these UK-equivalent land masses are owned and/or
controlled by single corporate entities, so the "solutions"
being offered to the "pollinator problem" are influenced by
the usual lobbying, pushed by the greed of the MBAs with 
spreadsheets that have been screwing everything up ever 
since VisiCalc came out for the Apple II.

The "native pollinator" and "environmentalist" camps are
chock full of people who do no homework, and sadly lack 
the judgment to tell fact from fiction (as we have seen 
so often in connection with CCD), so they are easy to 
convince that a fairy story about "Pollinator Corridors" 
and "Continuous Linear Habitats"  or "Greenways" will 
somehow save the pollinators.

What happens is that the large landowners get to enjoy
tax credits and other financial incentives for "setting
aside" land that they cannot farm anyway.  The land
set aside is little more than wasteland, and is far too
close to the pesticide-soaked monocultures to be of 
any actual value as pollinator habitat.

The environmentalists would be surprised to know that
this concept of "set-aside land" was floated more than
once to the USDA, and firmly rejected in scientific 
review as being of little actual practical value to 
the pollinators and environment.  

But like I said, these innocents do not do their
homework, so they are easy to enlist as unwitting
foot soldiers in the march towards profit and
the appearance of being "green" on the part of the
massive agribusiness interests that control both
the bulk of US farmland, and the US
"environmental movement".

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