Recently I posted a story about a court ruling that approved of the adding
of invertebrates to the "endangered species" list in California, stretching
the classification "fish" far enough to include all invertebrates.



The four species of bumble bee protected as a result in CA are the Crotch
bumblebee, the Franklin bumblebee, the Suckley cuckoo bumblebee and the
Western bumblebee (Bombus occidentalis).



But they may be too late - the most recent survey found zero Western
bumblebees, when it was widespread and common in prior decades.



https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.8505  (full paper)



"Bombus occidentalis was historically widespread across the state (Thorp et
al., 1983), but is now restricted to high meadows (CDFW, 2019; Graves et
al., 2020). This species appears to still be sporadically present in the
Sierra Nevada (Cole et al., 2020; Hatfield & LeBuhn, 2007), and the Northern
Coast Range (Graves et al., 2020), although we did not sample it in either
of these ecoregions, which is consistent with another recent study in the
Sierra Nevada (Loffland et al., 2017). The documented decline of B.
occidentalis began in the mid-1990s in the most western parts of its range,
including in California (Cameron, Jepsen, et al., 2011; Graves et al.,
2020)."




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