Passport to Texas

Friendly neighborhood pollinator.

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This is Passport to Texas

Pollinators are a trending topic these days.

We’re mainly talking about insects and sometimes mammals—like bats—who visit flowers.

Michael Warriner is non-game and rare species program leader for Texas Parks and Wildlife. Pollinators visit flowers for nectar or pollen, which they use as food.

But in the process, they’re transferring pollen from plant-to-plant, which the plant needs to become pollinated, and set viable seed.

Yet, over the years we’ve noticed a decline in the number of non-native and native pollinator species.

There’s a whole level of concern that’s manifested out of the concern for honeybees. Folks then started thinking about what’s going on with native bees, butterflies… And research shows that with things like bumblebees, there are a number of species that have experienced declines—that have disappeared from big parts of their range. And so there’s this whole overarching concern about native and non-native pollinators since their so closely tied to-–especially—human food production.

Tomorrow: how landowners can help revive slumping pollinator populations with Texas Parks and Wildlife’s new protocol.

The Wildlife Restoration program supports our series.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.