Caring for Pollinators - Bundesamt für Naturschutz

Ssymank, Hamm, Vischer-Leopold & Wittmann Introduction
The plan has four elements: assessment, adaptive management, capacity building and
mainstreaming, each with a detailed operational objective, rationale, activities, ways and
means and a timing of the expected outputs.
A series of international and national activities has been organized to conserve and sustain
the use of pollinators, and to maintain or restore their habitats (African Pollinators Initiative,
Brazilian Pollinators Initiative, European Pollinators Initiative, North American Pollinators
Protection Campaign and Oceania Pollinators Initiative). Each initiative has the aim to integrate
and co-ordinate local, national and international activities relating to pollination into a
cohesive network.
Furthermore there is a UNEP/GEF project “Conservation & Management of Pollinators for
Sustainable Agriculture through an Ecosystem Approach” witch will contribute to the conservation,
sustainable use and management of pollinators for example by developing and implementing
tools, methodologies, building local, national, regional and global capacities to
enable the design or promoting the coordination and integration of activities related to the
conservation and sustainable use of pollinators at the international level to enhance global
synergies.
As the following pages will show, there is a growing number of research and activities to
maintain pollination services. However there is still a long way to go with research, networking
and information transfer, political awareness and pollinator management as core activities
to maintain biological diversity worldwide.
We may hope that pollinators will be kept in our minds. We need them and we
need to care for them!
Citations:
FAO (2008): A contribution to the International Initiative for the Conservation and sustainable Use of
Pollinators. – Rapid Assessment of Pollinator’s Status. January 2008, 52 pp., FAO, Rome.
GALLAI, N., SALLES, J.M., SETTELE, J. & VAISSIÈRE, B. (in press): Economic valuation of the vulnerability
of world agriculture confronted to pollinator decline. Ecological Economics (in press;
doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2008.06.014).
NABHAM, G. P. & BUCHMANN, S. L. (1997): Services provided by pollinators. In: Nature´s services (ed.
Daily G.), pp. 133-150. Island Press, Washington D.C.
SPRENGEL, C. K. (1793): Das entdeckte Geheimnis der Natur im Bau und in der Befruchtung der Blumen.
– Berlin (F. Vieweg).
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