From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov Transcript for: Bee Health Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Steve Morris, Director, Natural Resources & Environment Related GAO Work: GAO-16-220: Bee Health: USDA and EPA Should Take Additional Actions to Address Threats to Bee Populations Released: March 2016 [ Background Music ] [Narrator:] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's March 2016. By pollinating crops, bees are critical to our food supply and are worth billions of dollars to farmers. Yet nearly a third of honeybee colonies have been dying each year since 2006 according to government and university researchers. A team led by Steve Morris, a director in GAO's Natural Resources and Environment team, recently reviewed federal efforts to protect bee health. GAO's Jacques Arsenault sat down with Steve to talk about what they found. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] Bees are a big deal for U.S. agriculture. Can you give me a sense of just how important they are? [ Steve Morris: ] Yes well, you know, bees are a big deal. They're critically important to agriculture. Just a little bit of history. European honeybees were brought into the U.S. hundreds of years ago to pollinate crops and produce honey. And there’re now about 2,000 commercial beekeepers managing about 2 million honeybee hives in the U.S. And many of these beekeepers transport their hives around the country to pollinate crops at different times of the year. For example, about three quarters of all the beehives go to California each spring to pollinate almonds. You know, other familiar crops that depend on honeybees include apples and blueberries and cherries and many more. So in total, bees are responsible for pollinating the crops that make up about a third of the U.S. diet. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] And I've been hearing news reports over the years about colony collapse and the mysterious disappearance of bees. What's going on here? [ Steve Morris: ] Well beekeepers and scientists have observed that honeybee hives have been dying at unusually high rates over the past decade. According to some estimates, close to 30 percent of hives have died off each winter. And this is critically important because it's about double the rate that beekeepers report as acceptable or sustainable. Now, there's been several factors or threats facing bees. These things include parasites and diseases, lack of habitat and food, and then pesticides as well. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] So, the White House put together a task force to look just at this issue. What are some of the key things that they recommended? [ Steve Morris: ] Yes, you know, the White House did issue a strategy back in 2015 for protecting bees and other pollinators such as butterflies. And they had two key goals. First was to basically reduce the winter losses of honeybee hives to about 15 percent by 2025 which would be half of the current loss rate. A second key goal was to restore or enhance 7 million acres of land for pollinators including bees by 2020. And these acres could be both on federal or private land. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] Now in this report, your team looked at a few things including how federal agencies are responding. First, you looked at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA, and their monitoring and conservation efforts. What do these efforts entail? [ Steve Morris: ] Yes, you know, we found USDA has focused its monitoring efforts on the health of honey bees. These efforts were actually increasing but we also noted that there's growing recognition of the importance of wild native bees both to agriculture and the environment. Various agencies are taking some steps to monitor the health of native bees but to further strengthen these efforts, we recommended that USDA work with these agencies to really develop a more coordinated approach to monitoring native bee species. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] Sounds like the honeybees are easier to monitor because they tend to be more of these commercial beekeepers and the native bees are a little more widely dispersed maybe? [ Steve Morris: ] Exactly. We also reported that the USDA had increased its funding for habitat conservation efforts. And they're working with farmers and landowners to increase bee habitat. And we fully support these efforts. But to ensure that USDA is meeting its goal, we recommended it track the acres of land that are being enhanced for bees. We also recommended that USDA improve its ability to evaluate the effectiveness of its conservation efforts because at the end of the day, we really want to make sure that the agencies' efforts are working to actually increase bee population. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] And the other big area that you looked at was EPA and their efforts to protect bees from pesticides. How’s EPA doing with those efforts? [ Steve Morris: ] Yeah, you know, as you said the EPA is responsible for regulating pesticides and this includes assessing the risk that they may pose to bees as well as humans and other animals. We noted back in 2014 that EPA changed the way it assesses the risks that pesticides pose to bees. And under this new process, EPA can require that pesticide manufacturers do a wide variety of tests to determine whether the pesticide is unsafe for bees. However, there are some limitations to this process and we made some recommendations to strengthen their efforts. And let me just point out a couple of these. First, USDA's current approach, they examine individual pesticides rather than mixtures of pesticides. And we found that mixing pesticides is a fairly common practice amongst farmers. And that such mixing may actually increase the risk that bees face. So we recommended that EPA gather more information on pesticide mixtures that farmers typically use. Second, we recommended that EPA develop a plan for gathering data about the risks that pesticides pose to the wild native bee species—bee species other than honeybees. And we believe it's important for EPA to examine these risks because native bees may be more vulnerable to pesticides than our honeybees. [ Jacques Arsenault: ] So finally, what would you say is the bottom line of this report? [ Steve Morris: ] Well, first and foremost, I would say bees are critically important to the nation's well-being. They continue to face numerous health threats. Their decline negatively affects agriculture, the environment, and ultimately the consumer. The government has increased its attention on this issue. They've taken a number of steps and we support these efforts but we think more can be done. And therefore, we're going to make some recommendations to strengthen efforts to restore and enhance bee habitat and also to reduce the risk of harm to bees from pesticides. And we believe these actions, if implemented, will go a long way in protecting bees. [ Background Music ] [Narrator:] To learn more, visit GAO.gov and be sure to tune in to the next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.