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National Pollinator Week 2025 Kicks Off with a Week of Activities and Actions—June 16-22, 2025!
***Featured Art Page submissions for National Pollinator Week, highlighted with the gratitude of Beyond Pesticides: Jesse from Livermore, CA: “Honeybee Pollinating Citrus Blossom”; Yumi from New York, NY: “Birds and the Bees”; Gretchen from Helena, MT: “Butterflies”; Janet from Concord, MA: “Beneath the Big Dipper”; and Trix from Petersburg, NY: “Downy Woodpecker.”
(Beyond Pesticides, June 16, 2025) Every year, Beyond Pesticides announces National Pollinator Week to remind eaters of food, gardeners, farmers, communities (including park districts to school districts), civic organizations, responsible corporations, policy makers, and legislators that there are actions that can be taken that are transformative. All the opportunities for action to protect pollinators, and the ecosystems that are critical to their survival, can collectively be transformational in eliminating toxic pesticides that are major contributors to the collapse of biodiversity. This is why Beyond Pesticides starts most discussions and strategic actions for meaningful pollinator and biodiversity protection with the transition to practicing and supporting organic.
In launching National Pollinator Week, Beyond Pesticides makes suggestions for individual actions to increase efforts to think and act holistically to protect the environment that supports pollinators. The impact that people have starts with grocery store purchases and the management of gardens, parks, playing fields, and public lands. The introduction of pesticides into our food supply and managed lands has contributed to an unsustainable downward spiral. The good news is that it is now proven that we do not need toxic pesticides to grow food productively and profitably (nor are they required to manage ballfields, parks, and public spaces).
That is why, in very realistic terms, Beyond Pesticides says that pollinator protection starts with organic practices. Pollinators—bees, butterflies, birds, bats, and other organisms—make a critical contribution to plant health, crop productivity, and the preservation of natural resources, but their existence is threatened by pesticide-contaminated habitats. Throughout the week, Beyond Pesticides will weave together actions that can be taken to promote the health of pollinators. Although these actions can include the establishment of pollinator-friendly plants, the first step is providing a safe place for pollinators to live, eat, reproduce, and take refuge from predators and adverse weather. In this context, pollinator conservation begins with organic management of the environment.
In recognition of the importance of pollinators and biodiversity to a healthy environment and healthy people during National Pollinator Week, Beyond Pesticides announces a week of activities and actions! Everything here you can find on our webpage, National Pollinator Week Kicks Off with a Week of Actions! Check out our daily celebration of unsung Pollinator heroes as well!
Pollinator Week 2025 by Beyond Pesticides
Monday: Pollinator Protection Starts with Organic Practices
Pollinators—bees, butterflies, birds, bats, and other organisms—make a critical contribution to plant health, crop productivity, and the preservation of natural resources, but their existence is threatened by pesticide-contaminated habitats! Throughout the week, we will suggest actions that you can take to promote the health of pollinators. Although these actions can include establishing pollinator-friendly plants, the first step is providing a safe place for pollinators to live, eat, reproduce, and take refuge from predators and adverse weather.
In other words, pollinator conservation begins with organic management of their environment. 📣 TAKE ACTION: Tell your Congressional Representative and Senators to cosponsor bills supporting organic agriculture.
In addition, millions of miles of roads, utility lines, railroad corridors, and other types of rights-of-way (ROWs) are treated with pesticides to control unwanted plants and insects. Some states have addressed the risk of using pesticides along ROWs by developing integrated pest management (IPM) programs, restricting when and where pesticides can be applied on ROWs, and/or providing no-spray agreements. Planting native vegetation, using mechanical, biological, and least-toxic vegetation control methods are effective in reducing and eliminating toxic pesticide applications.
What can we do? Take action, and encourage your community to develop an integrated roadside vegetation management program for roadside management. Cut, girdle, mow or use grazing animals whenever possible as a mechanical means to eradicate unwanted vegetation. Establish a roadside wildflower program that plants native flower and grass species, especially those that are attractive to bees and other pollinators. Avoid pesticides such as 2,4-D, glyphosate (Roundup), dicamba, picloram, and triclopyr for roadside management. Look to our Pesticide Gateway page for more information!
🖼️ Featured image: “Honeybee Pollinating Citrus Blossom” submitted by Jesse from Livermore, CA! (Arts Page)
Tuesday: Parks for a Sustainable Future—Become an Advocate!
Does your community have a pesticide-free park managed with organic practices? Do you wish it did? The time to take action to protect those parks and create new ones is now!
With Beyond Pesticides’ supporters, including the retailer Natural Grocers in the Midwest and west, the Beyond Pesticides’ Parks for a Sustainable Future program provides in-depth training to assist community land managers in transitioning two to three public green spaces to organic landscape management, while aiming to provide the knowledge and skills and experience necessary to transition all public areas in a locality to these safer and sustainable practices.
Through this program, Beyond Pesticides has assisted local leaders in converting the following parks and recreational areas exclusively to organic practices. With this program, Beyond Pesticides is currently working with 19 park districts in 12 states. In addition, Beyond Pesticides has worked with dozens of communities to adopt land management policies in the jurisdictions of nearly every state in the country. The goal is to create models that show the viability and cost effectiveness of organic management systems that eliminate petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers that contribute to the current health crisis, biodiversity collapse, and the climate emergency.
What can we do? Become a parks advocate! Beyond Pesticides is interested in working with you to encourage your community to transition to organic land care. Our training program starts small, with two to three demonstration sites, but often becomes the basis for broader change to land care practices throughout the entire community.
More we can do! Determine whether your state, school, or community has a law or policy governing pesticide usage in and around schools, or on public lands. Find out if, and how well, it is being implemented, and if you do not have a law, call for an organic land care policy in your community. Petition the school and the town parks department to convert the playing fields to organic care and require the grounds maintenance director and/or contractors to be trained in organic land care.
Envision an organic community where local parks, playing fields, and greenways are managed without unnecessary toxic pesticides, children and pets are safe to run around on the grass, and bees and other pollinators are safeguarded from toxic chemicals. At Beyond Pesticides, this is the future we envision and are working to achieve.
🖼️ Featured image: “Birds and the Bees” submitted by Yumi from New York, NY! (Arts Page)
Wednesday: Identifying and Planting for Pollinators
With pollinators responsible for over 80% of the world’s flowering plants, it’s no wonder we are fighting to protect them. Pollinators are important members of various land ecosystems; therefore, how we manage these ecosystems and landscapes plays a critical role in long-term pollinator health. The expansion of urban, suburban, and agricultural areas reduces pollinator habitat and access to food, while intensive chemical use harms these beneficial organisms. Pesticide applications expose bees, birds, butterflies, and more to acute and sublethal levels of pesticides, which can result in reproductive abnormalities, impaired foraging, and even death. Please see our brief introduction to pollinators here!
As a symptomatic example of the ongoing insect apocalypse, populations of both Eastern and Western monarch butterflies have been decreasing in recent years, leading environmentalists to clamor for an “endangered” classification for the species. Monarch butterflies serve as an indicator of the status of insect pollinators and their habitats, whose decline threatens worldwide ecology and agriculture, and exemplifies the failure of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), including the Office of Pesticide Programs, to regulate with a holistic lens that protects biodiversity. Although many factors are involved in the devastation of insect populations, scientific studies show that pesticide use ranks high, led by the use of seeds coated with neonicotinoid insecticides. Other pesticide impacts include mortality from insecticide drift and the destruction of milkweed by herbicides. These impacts are exacerbated by climate change, which is made worse by the production and use of petrochemical pesticides and fertilizers.
Because so many people have been involved in monitoring their populations, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has responded to the call to protect monarch butterflies by proposing to list them as a threatened species and designate critical habitat under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Join Beyond Pesticides and take action here! 📣 TAKE ACTION: Tell the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to finalize its proposed listing of monarchs as threatened.
What can we do? You can play a role in protecting pollinators simply by making an organic garden with colorful, bee-attractive flowering plants, pledging it as pollinator-friendly, or even organizing your community, schools, or local government to make choices that foster pollinators. Don’t have a garden? Windows and balconies are also great places to feature plants to encourage pollinators to stop by! Backyard trees, gardens, and beekeeping are great ways to support biodiversity and pollinators. Intentionally providing water, food, and forage to pollinators will encourage and boost pollinator populations in your community.
It helps to review Organic Lawn Care 101 best practices and know your weeds—simple steps to convert your lawn to organic! Check out the BEE Protective Habitat Guide, the Do-It-Yourself Biodiversity resource, which offers hints about increasing biodiversity, and the Pollinator-Friendly Seed Directory.
Additionally, please see the short film [above] “The Seeds That Poison,” a Beyond Pesticides feature video highlighting the hazards associated with a major use of bee-toxic pesticides—seed coatings!
🖼️ Featured image: “Butterflies” submitted by Gretchen from Helena, MT! (Arts Page)
Thursday: Juneteenth and Environmental Justice
In a 2022 interview with Southern Environmental Law Center, Robert Bullard, PhD—known as the father of environmental justice—defines the term as the embracement of “the principle that all communities, all people, are entitled to equal protection of our environmental laws, housing laws, transportation laws…civil rights laws, human rights laws, and health laws and regulations.”
As Pollinator Week coincides with the Juneteenth celebration, the time is now to renew our commitment to environmental justice while seeking the adoption of transformational policies and practices that recognize the urgency to address disproportionate harm inflicted by toxic pesticide use. Those fighting for environmental justice understand that the harms inflicted by toxic chemical production and use cause disproportionate adverse effects on people of color—from fenceline communities near chemical production plants to the hazardous and inhumane working conditions in agricultural fields, to the elevated risk factors for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) from toxic pesticide exposure.
Amidst the overwhelming evidence of disproportionate risks to POC in marginalized communities from pesticide exposure that result in deleterious health effects, showcased in studies and research spanning decades [and tracked by Beyond Pesticides!], there is a solution that can address this environmental injustice. Stay tuned for the Daily News featured on Juneteenth this Thursday, June 19, 2025!
What can we do? You can speak up for environmental justice and urge your U.S. Representative and Senators to ensure funding for meaningful programs that aim to protect those essential workers who grow our nation’s food, as well as the health of their loved ones. This includes the following programs as poignant examples:
- The Bioecological Center for Research on Children’s Health project, funded by the EPA, which was designed to identify, understand and address the cumulative impacts of exposures to environmental toxins (pesticides, heavy metals, particulate matter) and non-chemical psychosocial stressors (poverty, food insecurity, trauma, discrimination, etc.) on the health, development, and growth of farmworker children. Working in collaboration with the Florida State University (FSU) health clinic in Immokalee, the project would have examined threats, implemented strategies to improve health outcomes for farmworker children, and collaboratively established a Center in Immokalee to continue the research, outreach, and services to the community.
- The Sentinel Event Notification System for Occupational Risks (SENSOR) program, funded by NIOSH, monitors pesticide-related incidents of injuries, illnesses, and death at the state level, tracking worker pesticide exposure incidents. By providing technical support to state health agencies to train medical professionals on how to diagnose and treat pesticide poisonings, SENSOR strengthens the network of health experts who can help advise farmworkers, pesticide applicators, parents, and others to prevent harm from pesticides, often with disproportionate adverse effects in people of color communities.
🖼️ Featured image: “Beneath the Big Dipper” submitted by Janet from Concord, MA! (Arts Page)
Friday: Time to Spread the Buzz!
In view of EPA’s failure to protect pollinators from pesticides, the lives of those essential insects, birds, and mammals are increasingly dependent on state and local laws that are under threat. In particular, bird species are crucially important for preserving biodiversity, as well as providing ecosystem services such as pollination and mosquito management. Protection of birds and their habitats allows for other organisms, including humans, to prosper.
From higher insecticide levels in pesticide-laden nests linked to increased offspring mortality to the threats to seed-eating birds from neonicotinoid-treated seeds, agricultural intensification harms bird species within the U.S. and throughout the world. It has become clear that we cannot count on EPA to protect birds—or the rest of us— from the interconnected threats of pesticide exposure, habitat loss, and climate change. The alternative is to promote policies at the state and local level that move towards organic land management in agriculture, communities, and homes. 📣 TAKE ACTION: Tell your governor and mayor to protect birds by adopting policies that support organic land management.
In addition, the Trump administration has removed crucial protections established under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA), including those that protect birds from pesticide poisoning. Until 2017, MBTA protected migratory birds from such incidental taking as oil and gas operations, which account for 90% of migratory bird deaths, industrialization, and pesticide use. The Migratory Bird Protection Act (MBPA), introduced in May by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), will restore protections against an “incidental take,” but alone, it only returns to a status quo approach. Additional measures are needed, including a wholescale conversion to organic agriculture and land care, as well as reducing dependence on petrochemicals in other ways. 📣 TAKE ACTION: Tell your U.S. Representative to cosponsor the Migratory Bird Protection Act (H.R. 3188).
What else can we do? Order a Pesticide-Free Zone sign to showcase your organic yard or garden, share resources with your community, and share photos of pollinators on social media of with the hashtags #PollinatorWeek or #ProtectPollinators—then submit them to our Art Page! The banner for Pollinator Week highlights art submissions from members of the public to our Art Page! 🐝
🖼️ Featured image: “Downy Woodpecker” submitted by Trix from Petersburg, NY! (Arts Page)
Food for Thought in Closing
“We need worms to create soil; flies and beetles and fungi to break down dung; ladybirds and hoverflies to eat greenflies; bees and butterflies to pollinate plants to provide food, oxygen, fuel, and medicines, and hold the soil together; and bacteria to help plants fix nitrogen and to help cows to digest grass. . . [yet] we often choose to squander the irreplaceable, to discard those things that both keep us alive and make life worth living. Perhaps if we learn to save a bee today, we can save the world tomorrow?”
—David Goulson, PhD, National Forum Speaker, A Sting in the Tale (2013)
All unattributed positions and opinions in this piece are those of Beyond Pesticides.
