From what I can tell, this Highways Bee Act doesn't specify
what it will cost the taxpayers to "enhance plantings of native
forbs and grasses" on "17 million acres of roadsides".
17 million acres = 26,562 square miles of land = an area of
land almost as big as the state of South Carolina. According to
the Xerces Society website the cost for seed mixes averages
around $300.00 an acre http://www.xerces.org/pollinator-seed/
So 17,000,000 acres of roadside times $300 an acre
= $5,100,000,000.
That 5 billion is just for the cost of the seed. According to the
Xerces website: "Successfully establishing large areas of
wildflowers requires extensive site preparation to remove
competing vegetation, especially perennial weeds. Often
one to two years of additional follow-up are also required to
control weeds in newly established plantings."
So the ultimate cost of this "Highway Bee Act" could run well
into the tens, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars worth of
supplies, equipment, labor and administration.
Something else to think about is that according to the University
of Kansas http://monarchwatch.org/bring-back-the-monarchs/
"Development is consuming 6,000 acres a day, a loss of
2,200,000 million acres per year."
So 17,000,000 acres divided by 2,200,000 acres = 7.73. So that
means that even if Congress approved spending tens of billions
of dollars to plant and manage 17,000,000 acres of roadside,
only 7.73 years later 17,000,000 ADDITIONAL acres would have
been lost due to development.
Thus no matter how many tens or hundreds of billions of dollars is
spent, there will still be a net long term loss of habitat for
pollinators and so their populations will continue to decline.
I think new laws and regulations designed to place severe limits on
the sizes of new homes and cars would be much less costly
and more effective at treating the source of the habitat loss
problem instead of treating the symptom via programs like
the "Highway Bee Act".
Paul Cherubini
El Dorado, Calif.
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