Caring for Pollinators - Bundesamt für Naturschutz

Ssymank, Hamm, Vischer-Leopold & Wittmann Introduction
Today we understand that bees and other pollinators have an outstanding function in ecosystems
because they literally maintain terrestrial plants. In other words, pollination ranks
with photosynthesis as the most important processes in plant life. Today we indeed have to
be somewhat afraid that the golden days of bees on earth are about to end. Although there
are more than 25,000 bee species, we are losing pollinators in agricultural areas, where we
need them most. And losing pollinators means losing fruits, seeds, and money - about € 153
billion per year .
Flies represent one of the largest insect groups of the world with approx. 160.000 species in
162 families. They play a major role in pollination of wild plants and crops with over 70 families
known to visit regularly flowers.
No chocolate without flies! Who knows that the cocoa-tree is pollinated by small midges and
that only fly-pollination will yield the cocoa-fruit, refined into chocolate, a product that had an
overwhelming triumphant success shortly after its introduction in Europe.....
This is just one example of many crops and flies are second in their importance as pollinators
compared to the better-known bees. They have been largely neglected and have special
importance for example in sub(arctic) or high altitude ecosystems, in the understory of tropical
forests and many wild plants worldwide are almost exclusively pollinated by flies. While a
few groups of flies are known as vectors of diseases, the major part of the flies are beneficial
and essential in their pollination services, in decomposing organic material or as biological
control agents.
More than 200 years after Sprengel’s insight, some 40 scientists initiated the International
Pollinators Initiative (IPI) in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The decline in numbers of the natural pollinators
has lead to the composition of the “Sao Paulo Declaration on Pollinators” for the protection
and sustainable use of pollinators 1998 in Sao Paulo within the scope of the International
Pollinators Initiative and to its signing at the 5th Conference of Parties (COP 5) of the
Convention on Biological Diversity.
In April 2002 the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 6) adopted the Decision VI/5, a
“Plan of Action for the International Initiative for the Conservation and Sustainable Use of
Pollinators” prepared by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
together with leading pollination scientists
(http://www.beesfordevelopment.org/info/info/pollination/international-pollinator-.shtml). This
plan under the leadership of the FAO aims to promote co-ordinated action worldwide to:
• Monitor pollinator decline, its causes and its impact on pollination services,
• Address the lack of taxonomic information on pollinators,
• Assess the economic value of pollination and the economic impact of decline of pollination
services, and
• Promote the conservation and the restoration and sustainable use of pollinator diversity
in agriculture and related ecosystems.
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