Carrboro residents and businesses can support pollinator species by helping create pollinator-friendly habitat and educating others in the community.
The ideal pollinator-friendly habitat:
- Provides diverse and abundant nectar and pollen from plants blooming in succession.
- Provides clean water for drinking, nest-building, cooling, diluting stored honey, and butterfly puddling.
- Is pesticide-free or has pesticide use carried out with least ill effects on pollinators. Of particular concern is the impact of a class of pesticides known as neonicotonoids* .
- Is comprised mostly, if not entirely, of native species of annual and perennial wildflowers, shrubs, trees, and grasses because many native pollinators prefer or depend on the native plants with which they co-evolved.
- Provides undisturbed spaces (leaf and brush piles, un-mowed fields or field margins, fallen trees and other dead wood) for nesting and overwintering for native pollinators; and
- Includes educational material to pollinate society with crucial information
Examples of specific ways that citizens can provide support can be found in the links on this page. One way to sow support is to sign the Pollinator Pledge from the Xerces Society.
* In a study published in the journal Nature, scientists from Newcastle Univeristy showed that bees have a preference for sugar solutions that are laced with the pesticides imidacloprid and thiamethoxam, possibly indicating they can become hooked on the chemicals. A separate study also published in Nature has been endorsed as the most conclusive evidence yet that neonicotinoids harm wild bee populations, which include bumblebees and solitary bees. Neonicotonoids are widely used and available locally.