BLM OR/WA - Pollinators

The Bureau of Land Management is interested in supporting research regarding pollinators. Animal pollinators are responsible for fertilizing nearly 90 percent of the world's approximately 350,000 flowering plants and therefore play a pivotal role in the production of food used by human and wildlife populations. Wildfires and anthropogenic disturbances such as timber harvest are key agents of change that lead to the creation of early seral conditions in forested landscapes. With respect to pollinators, these disturbances often promote the critical resources that regulate their populations: flowering plants, which provide food, and nesting sites, which allow for rearing offspring. Populations of pollinators are largely restricted to early seral conditions in temperate coniferous forests, and disturbance events that promote such conditions should be of critical importance for maintaining pollinator populations. To date, most investigations of how disturbances and land management practices influence pollinator populations have been restricted to agro⿐ecosystems and/or open field systems, with scant attention paid to pollinators in other natural habitats. This is particularly true in the Pacific Northwest where information is lacking regarding how pollinators are linked to natural and anthropogenic disturbances in conifer-dominated landscapes.