Environment Archives - Page 33 of 107

Back to nature: Last chunk of Elwha dams out in September

Steve Ringman / The Seattle TimesWhat’s left of the 210-foot-high Glines Canyon Dam, a section of about 30 feet, is awaiting a final blast in September. In the distance, the bottom of former Lake Mills today forms part of the new Elwha Valley. — Steve Ringman / The Seattle Times
What’s left of the 210-foot-high Glines Canyon Dam, a section of about 30 feet, is awaiting a final blast in September. In the distance, the bottom of former Lake Mills today forms part of the new Elwha Valley.

Fish are storming back to the Elwha, there’s a sandy beach at the mouth of the river again, and native plants are growing where there used to be lakes.

By: Lynda V. Mapes, Seattle Times

The last dam will be blasted out of the Elwha River sometime next month, cementing the hopes of generations of advocates and tribal leaders who fought to make it happen.

With the concrete out, the long-term revival of a legendary wilderness valley in the Olympics can now unfold unfettered after 100 years dammed.

The watershed already is springing back to life from the mountains to the sea: Salmon are swimming and spawning miles above the former Elwha dam site. Alders stand more than head high as the native forest reclaims the former lake beds. There’s a soft, sandy beach at the river mouth, where before there was only bare cobble. And birds, bugs and mammals are feasting on salmon eggs and carcasses as fish once again nourish the watershed.

The Elwha is a rare chance to start over on a grand scale. The $325 million federal project, begun three years ago, has reopened 70 miles of habitat for steelhead and salmon, rebuilt wildlife populations and restored native plants. The river is hard at work with its restored natural flow, rebuilding its plunge pools, log jams and gravel bars.

While it will never be the Eden it was, the Elwha one day likely will be pretty darn close — and sooner than many expected.

“It goes against my deepest notions of how fast ecosystem recovery can possibly happen,” said Christopher Tonra, a research fellow with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center in Washington, D.C., who is tracking the response of dippers, a native, aquatic songbird, to dam removal in the Elwha. “We are all trained, as biologists, to think of things over the long run. I am not saying the Elwha is fully recovered. But it is so mind blowing to me, the numbers of fish, and seeing the birds respond immediately to the salmon being there. It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.”

Early hydropower

The dams were built beginning in 1910 for hydropower, but lacked fish passage. It took an act of Congress, passed in 1992, to finally take down Elwha Dam and then Glines Canyon Dam, about eight miles above it.

Unbuild it, and they will come: Salmon have been storming back ever since Elwha Dam was blasted out of the way in March 2012. Taking down Glines Canyon Dam has taken longer, in part because it holds back a larger load of sediment.

Managing the release of about 27 million cubic yards of sediment as the dams come down is why removal has taken so long. There was so much sediment stuck behind the former Glines Canyon Dam alone that, stacked up, the pile would tower more than twice the height of the Empire State Building, notes Jonathan Warrick, of the U.S. Geological Survey.

The dams were lowered notch by notch, allowing the river to naturally flush about half the total sediment load downriver and out to the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

There have been bumps along the way. A water-treatment plant — the single most expensive part of the project — failed when a critical intake clogged with debris rinsed out by the river, delaying removal by a year while repairs were made.

The tribal hatchery and federal fish-restoration plan, which includes stocking of some hatchery fish, have been a magnet for lawsuits and controversy.

But nature, meanwhile, has carried right on.

Ian Miller, a coastal hazard specialist based in Port Angeles for Washington Sea Grant, has been monitoring the beach at the river mouth.

The surprise to him isn’t the big volume of sediment the Elwha is delivering downstream, but the fact that it is sticking around. “Basically, this is all new land,” Miller said, walking the beach east of the river mouth on a recent visit. “Everything here is less than two years old. You can walk to (sandy) spots on the beach that are 30 feet deep. It is just a dramatically different system.”

A beach that used to be too rocky to comfortably walk on is today used by kids to play soccer.

Meanwhile, fat chinook salmon are cruising up the river. Staff from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife started working the Elwha in July with a gill net to eventually capture 1,600 big Elwha fall chinook. The fish, of both wild and hatchery origin, are taken to stock the next generation of Elwha fall chinook raised in the state rearing channel, used since the 1970s to preserve the unique Elwha strain.

Stars of the river

Working the fast current was a fish rodeo to capture, then quickly take the powerful, thrashing fish from the net unharmed. Long and thick as a thigh, the chinook, the largest in the Puget Sound region, are the celebrities of Elwha River restoration, and a major reason for dam removal.

Elwha fish populations are projected to grow from about 4,000 to 400,000 over the next 20 to 30 years. Salmon already have hatched and migrated up- and downstream of the former Elwha dam site for the first time in a century.

Revegetation — the most visible piece of the Elwha renewal project — also is unfolding dramatically. Already, terraced banks of the former lakes are burgeoning with alder and cottonwood, the gift of seeds carried by the lakes as they gradually were lowered during the drawdown that started dam removal.

Most difficult to revegetate are the cobbly, gravel flats of the lake bed farther upstream, in the former Lake Mills, a land where many a planted Douglas fir and other seedlings have gone to die.

But in other spots, cottonwood seedlings have established so thickly they look like a lawn. Alder trees seeded in 2011 as lake levels dropped now have grown more than head tall. Where there used to be bald sand, goldenrod buzzes with bees, and a young, stocky Nootka rose bush conceals a bird’s nest full of eggs.

In all, more than 500 acres of former lake bed are being replanted, with nearly 60 varieties of native grasses, flowers, woody shrubs and trees from the Elwha Valley through 2018.

Dam removal also is kick-starting broader effects in the ecological systems of the watershed, from its food chain to the home ranges of animals.

Kim Sager-Fradkin, wildlife biologist for the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, already has tracked fish-eating otters to parts of the Elwha that salmon have recolonized since dam removal, and documented an increase in the otters’ nutrient levels derived from fish.

John McMillan, a biologist with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries walking the tributaries since dam removal began, said that in the first year he saw salmon carcasses on the riverbank. But now he doesn’t because the otters, bears, cougars, bobcats and mink have learned to take advantage of food where for so many years there was none.

“The ecological relationships between the animals are coming back,” McMillan said. To me, that is such a great feeling.”

Walk the river

Take a walking tour of the Elwha River with Park Service rangers on the former Lake Aldwell. Tours are on Tuesdays and Sundays at 1 p.m. through Sept. 2. The hourlong walks are free, and begin at the former boat launch at the end of Lake Aldwell Road, north off of Highway 101 just west of the Elwha River Bridge. For more information, call 360-565-3130.

Tribal Officials Urge Water Release Into Klamath River to Prevent Mass Fish Kill

Courtesy Hoopa Valley TribeChairperson Danielle Vigil-Masten and Tribal Council members took Bureau of Reclamation officials and Supervisor Ryan Sundberg on a boat down the Trinity River in Hoopa. — Courtesy Hoopa Valley Tribe
Chairperson Danielle Vigil-Masten and Tribal Council members took Bureau of Reclamation officials and Supervisor Ryan Sundberg on a boat down the Trinity River in Hoopa.

By: Indian Country Today

Dropping water levels and rising temperatures in the persistent California drought have tribal members concerned about a fish kill—and, some say, fish are already dying.

The Hoopa Tribe is pressing for a release of water from the Trinity River, which feeds the Klamath. Hundreds of tribal members from the northern coast of California, along with river conservationists, traveled to the state seat in Sacramento on August 19 to urge officials to reconsider their decision to stop pre-emptive water releases.

Yurok, Karuk and Hoopa Valley tribal members joined with people from the Klamath Justice Coalition, coming by the busload, according to the Times-Standard.

It was the second attempt at confronting officials to try and get the message across. On August 11 others showed up in Redding, California, at a press conference on wildfires to ask U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell directly to authorize such a move.

Tribal members are looking for a release of Trinity River water out of Lewiston Dam, they said in a release. The Trinity is the Klamath River’s main tributary. They are worried about a fish kill on the scale of one that occurred in 2002, also for lack of water and a too-high temperature. Tens of thousands of otherwise healthy fish died that year, under very similar conditions.

“The Klamath fish kill of 2002 led to poor salmon returns devastating west coast fisheries for years afterward,” said Dania Colegrove, Hoopa Tribal member and activist with the conservation group Got Water, in a statement. “Since then tribes, scientists and the Department of Interior have worked together to avert fish kills by preventively releasing water during drought years.”

Many say they are already seeing dead fish. They fear that a release once that starts happening would not come in time to stop disease from spreading. Though Jewell met with the protesters after the press conference, she did not agree to release water.

“There is an opportunity to do emergency releases, if we see the temperature rise,” Jewell said to the group at the press conference, according to the Times-Standard. “We’ll make sure that people come out and there is an opportunity to see it. We are dealing with profound drought all over. We’re dealing with it in the Klamath. So, I’ll follow up. Also, I want you guys to understand the biggest issue is the lack of water.”

Two days later, though, Jewell sent a federal team to tour the river along with Hoopa Valley Tribe experts. On August 14, Bureau of Reclamation Regional Director David Murillo and Assistant Regional Director Pablo Arroyave toured the river. In addition the Humboldt County Fifth District Supervisor, Ryan Sundberg, added his voice to that of the Hoopa Valley Tribal Council and Chairperson Danielle Vigil-Masten, calling for immediate water releases into the Trinity River, according to a release from the Hoopa Valley Tribe.

“It affects the economy throughout the county when the fish are threatened,” Sundberg said in the statement. “It’s a diverse County and a diverse Board of Supervisors, but everyone is united on this issue.”

Video: Klamath Fish Kill Redux? Teens Tell Grown-Ups to ‘Put More Water in the River’

YouTube/Yurok youth videoThis is what the Klamath River looked like in 2002, when conditions were similar to those present now. Releasing water from the Trinity River into the Klamath would cool it down and raise water levels, enabling fish to survive. — YouTube/Yurok youth video
This is what the Klamath River looked like in 2002, when conditions were similar to those present now. Releasing water from the Trinity River into the Klamath would cool it down and raise water levels, enabling fish to survive.

By: Indian Country Today

“It’s time to put more water in the river.”

So says one teen in this video put together by Yurok youth who, fearful of a fish kill on the Klamath River in California, went out and interviewed tribal leaders as well as those who witnessed mass fish death in 2002.

Water levels are low in the river, and the temperature is rising. Fish, especially salmon about to spawn, congregate in the cooler water, and their proximity can spread disease—which gets cultivated in warmer water. In 2002 this resulted in the deaths of 60,000 to 80,000 fish, crippling fisheries and severely compromising sustenance fishing.

Members and leaders of the Hoopa Valley, Karuk and Yurok tribes have confronted U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell about the decision not to release water from the Trinity River into the Klamath. They have also protested outside state government buildings in Sacramento.

“The Klamath River is on the brink of another massive fish kill,” claim the makers of this video.

The river smells terrible, one girl describes, and the salmon, while alive, had gills that “looked weird to me,” she said. “It made me angry and broke my heart, seeing that happening.”

The river looks sad and sick, said a Yurok man, recalling when it used to be a glorious emerald green, when he was a child. Now it’s green, alright—neon toxic green with things floating in it.

“It’s pretty sad,” he said.

Much of the video is devoted to recounting what transpired during the 2002 fish kill, then drawing parallels between the conditions then and now. Is the Klamath River on the brink of another fish kill? Wathc Yurok youth investigate, below.

Big Coal’s Plans For The Pacific Northwest Take A Major Hit

In this photo taken on July 6, 2014, a coal train is seen passing by Bellingham Bay in Bellingham, Wash. (AP Photo/Rachel La Corte)

By: Lynne Peeples, Huffington Post

Doctors, tribal leaders, business owners and concerned parents are among those cheering a potentially major blow to Big Coal.

On Monday, an Oregon state agency announced its rejection of a permit for a coal export facility on the Columbia River. The proposed Coyote Island Terminal is one of three remaining projects being pushed by the fossil fuel industry to create a coal export superhighway through the Pacific Northwest. Three previous proposals have already been dropped.

The Oregon Department of State Lands cited disruption to waterways and harm to tribal fisheries among its reasons for the refusal, which makes future approval of the port unlikely but still possible if the company pursuing the project files a convincing appeal.

Tom Wood, owner of the Rivertap Restaurant and Pub in The Dalles, Oregon, called the news a “landmark victory for our community, as well as communities across the nation.”

About three years ago, Wood and his son, Aiden, then 9, were salmon fishing on the Columbia River. As they returned to their car, Aiden spotted small clumps of coal near some railroad tracks.

“We brought a pile home and lit them on fire,” Wood recalled. “You know, the fun things you do with coal.”

He soon realized that the coal likely came from the open rail cars that shuttle along the Columbia River to Canadian ports. That recognition helped push him to join with thousands of others across state, economic and political lines who have tried to thwart the proposed increase in the number of these coal trains rolling through the region. The mile-plus-long trains originate at mines in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana and head west to meet up with Asia-bound ships. Opponents, who have been protesting and signing petitions for a few years now, worry that more coal trains could ultimately lead to problems ranging from local traffic delays and health harms due to air pollution, to faster climate change as a result of more coal-burning overseas.

Proponents of the coal ports, meanwhile, contend that greater exports mean needed jobs and tax revenues for struggling Western towns and Native American reservations.

“We do have to balance the health of our community with the need for commerce,” said Wood. But he argued that the former is more critical in the long term, including for his son’s future. Referring to the permit rejection, he said, “The win is a testament to the power and dedication of countless Northwest families to assure that these dirty, dangerous projects don’t take root for short-term gains.”

The U.S. has seen a steady decline in domestic coal use in recent years thanks to tighter federal regulations and the expanded viability of natural gas and renewable energy. But the rise of coal-hungry economies in China, India and other fast-developing nations offers a promising alternative market for coal companies. If government agencies eventually grant approval to all three export terminals proposed for Oregon and Washington, up to 100 million metric tons of the combustible rock per year could soon pass through the Pacific Northwest. The Coyote Island Terminal on the Port of Morrow at Boardman, Oregon, would account for less than 10 million metric tons of that total.

Ambre Energy, the Australian-based company pursuing the project, told The Huffington Post in a statement that it disagrees with Oregon’s “political decision.”

“We are evaluating our next steps and considering the full range of legal and permitting options,” added Liz Fuller, an Ambre Energy spokeswoman.

With the door still open for the Coyote Island Terminal to be approved, as well as for the other two port proposals in Washington state, opponents are voicing somewhat restrained optimism.

“This is a relatively small amount of coal compared to the other proposals,” said KC Golden, senior policy adviser for the nonprofit Climate Solutions. But he added that the formal permit denial is still a “very big deal.”

“It’s a terrific affirmation of what, in some ways, ought to be obvious,” said Golden. “This is a profoundly bad idea for the Northwest and for the world.”

Among the most vocal opponents have been Native American tribes whose reservations lie in the coal trains’ path.

“Yakama Nation will not rest until the entire regional threat posed by the coal industry to our ancestral lands and waters is eradicated,” JoDe Goudy, the Yakama tribal council chairman, said in a statement Monday night.

On Sunday, the Lummi Nation, whose reservation neighbors one of the proposed ports in Washington state, launched a totem pole journey — a road trip with totem pole in tow — that they hope will consolidate tribal opposition to Big Coal and Big Oil.

“Such decisions are few and far between,” the tribe stated in response to Monday’s announcement. “This is important not just for the Yakama and Umatilla but all Indian fishing tribes. Together we can, and will, protect our way of life.”

Meanwhile, there are other tribes that could benefit from coal exports. As HuffPost reported in January after the Lummi Nation’s first totem pole journey, the Crow Nation of rural Montana argues that it desperately needs to develop its coal reserves to lift its people out of poverty.

Dr. Robert Merchant, a pulmonologist in Billings, Montana, who deals with the health problems related to coal mining near his city, acknowledged the dilemma.

“There are a lot of people that would stand to have substantial gain from the extraction industry,” he said. But he also sees the high public costs associated with the industry.

Montana, Oregon and Washington are among Western states battling forest fires this summer and suffering the resulting poor air quality. Scientists warn that such blazes are becoming more frequent and intense with the changing climate and that coal plays a significant role in this shift.

Then there’s the blowback of toxic pollution from Asia’s coal-fired power plants. “Plumes come right across the Pacific,” Merchant said, noting that they can further contaminate the West’s air and water with toxins such as mercury.

Perhaps of most immediate concern to many opposed are the trains, barges and ships themselves, which block roadways for emergency vehicles, belch diesel fumes and blow coal dust. Diesel exhaust is known to worsen conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and may even raise the risk of certain cancers. The extent of the threat from heavy-metal-laden coal dust is less clear, although evidence is building.

The public health implications spurred more than 3,000 medical professionals and public health advocates to sign on to letters requesting denial of the Coyote Island Terminal permit. In Oregon alone, 165 physicians voiced their concerns to the governor.

“We are particularly concerned with the health of our most vulnerable populations: prenatal, early childhood, the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions,” they wrote.

Wood and his family live within a half mile of coal train tracks. Trains pass within 300 yards of his restaurant and within 50 feet of a winery he helps operate.

“It’s been a challenging fight,” Wood said, “and it’s far from done.”

Willie Nelson And Neil Young To Headline Anti-Keystone XL Concert On Nebraska Farm

Source: Huffington Post

Aug 18 (Reuters) – Veteran musicians Willie Nelson and Neil Young are teaming up for a benefit concert in Nebraska to raise funds in the fight against land being sold for the Keystone XL oil pipeline project, charity organization Bold Nebraska said on Monday.
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Nelson, 81, and Young, 68, both known for their ties to country rock and folk music and their environmental activism, will perform at the “Harvest the Hope Concert” on Sept. 27 at a farm near Neligh, Nebraska.

The farm is owned by Art and Helen Tanderup, who are campaigning against selling their land to TransCanada Corp to lay a pipeline that would carry crude oil from northern Alberta to refiners in Texas.

“Our family has worked this land for over 100 years. We will not allow TransCanada to come in here and destroy our land and water for their profit,” said Tanderup.

The concert is being hosted by Bold Nebraska along with Indigenous Environmental Network and Cowboy & Indian Alliance, comprising agricultural and tribal landowners who believe the pipeline will negatively impact the environment.

The Nebraska Supreme Court will hear arguments next month in a dispute over the planned 1,200-mile (1,900 km) planned route for the controversial $5.4 billion pipeline. A court ruling is not expected until 2015.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy in Los Angeles; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Triple Rescue And Rehab Ends Well For Lucky Ospreys

Rehabbed osprey flies away after its release Wednesday in Finley, Washington.Andrea Berglin — Rehabbed osprey flies away after its release Wednesday in Finley, Washington.
Andrea Berglin

By Tom Banse, NW News Network

Three young ospreys and a parent are flying free along the Columbia River today after surviving close calls with litter.

One of these ospreys was rescued by BPA linemen last week as it dangled from its nest in a tangle of plastic baling twine near Kennewick, Washington. The other two were pushed out of a different nest near Burbank, Washington, when their mother thrashed about in a wad of derelict fishing net.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife and Army Corps of Engineers staff captured and cut the mother free last month. All three youngsters were rehabbed at Blue Mountain Wildlife in Pendleton, Oregon.

Center director Lynn Tompkins said the trio was released together at the first nest this week.

“The parents are still there. They’ll feed all three babies. Birds are just amazing that way. It’s like the one baby went back to his nest and he brought two friends home from camp,” Tompkins said with a chuckle.

Tompkins said the second nest was not easily accessible to stage a release there. She said ospreys have an unhealthy fondness for feathering their nests with discarded baling twine or fishing line. No one can explain why.

Twice earlier this year, volunteers with Tompkins’ center responded to osprey entanglements, but the birds were dead by the time rescuers arrived.

“This is as good as it gets. Three out of three,” Tompkins enthused.

She wishes more fishermen and farmers would pick up after themselves when fishing line gets snagged or hay bales are cut loose. “You know, people don’t think of the consequences of their actions, leaving all this stuff around. Or it’s not convenient or something,” Tompkins said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it has been involved in five rescues of entangled ospreys in the last three years just around its Mid-Columbia refuges.

“It’s a really big problem, and who would have thought it,” USFWS natural resource planner Dan Haas said. “It’s a miracle there aren’t more entanglements.”

Haas participated in the initial rescue of the osprey chick pair near his office in Burbank, Washington. He said he is delighted the young raptors recovered from their ordeal and were successfully released back into the wild.

“Who knows how many are dying without ever being discovered,” Haas said.

Recycling programs have started in Oregon’s Willamette Valley and Idaho’s upper Salmon River valley to collect used baling twine so the ospreys can’t get it and bring it to their nests in place of lichens and grasses.

How one Pacific Northwest tribe is carving out a resistance to coal — and winning

cover_coalprotest_post — Daniel Thornton

By Amber Cortes and Grist staff, Grist, 15 Aug 2014

The Lummi Nation, a Native American tribe in the Pacific Northwest, has taken an uncompromising stand against the largest proposed coal export terminal in the country: the Gateway Pacific Terminal. If completed, it would export 48 million tons of coal mined from Montana and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, and in the process threaten the Lummi’s ancestral fishing grounds and their economic survival. On Aug. 17 the Lummi people launch a totem pole journey — both a monument to protest and a traveling rally that will bring together imperiled locals, citizen groups, and other indigenous tribes for a unified front against Big Coal and Big Oil.

Grist fellow Amber Cortes visited the Lummis in the run-up to the pivotal protest to find out how they’ve been able to push back against the terminal. The result is a rich story about activism, alliances, and small victories that add up to a big resistance.

For the full story experience, click here.

Agency Reconsidering Water For Klamath Salmon

By: Associated Press

The federal agency that oversees water in Northern California’s Klamath Basin is taking another look at releasing some to prevent the spread of disease among salmon returning to spawn in drought conditions.

A U.S. Bureau of Reclamation spokeswoman said Friday a decision is likely next week.

The bureau had earlier denied a request from the Hoopa Valley Tribe to release some water from Lewiston Dam on the Trinity River to prevent the spread of a parasite that attacks salmon in stagnant waters, though it would release some once significant numbers of fish started dying.

Tribal scientists said by then it would be too late.

The tribe took their case to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell when she was in Redding, California, this week, and she agreed to review the situation.

Washington Wildfires Displace Deer

By Courtney Flatt, OPB

Wildfires have ravaged more than a million acres across the Northwest. In central Washington, the burned landscape will leave one of the state’s largest deer herds without a place to go this winter, when deer like to eat bitterbrush and chokecherry.

Those shrubs will be hard for deer to find this year – with 25,000 acres of habitat scorched by fire, including parts of five wildlife areas.

State wildlife biologist Scott Fitkin said the so-called Carlton Complex Fire will affect feeding habitat for up to 10,000 deer.

“We’ve dealt with winter range burns before, but we’ve never had to do it on this scale,” Fitkin said.

That means many fawns and some adult deer could starve this winter. Wildlife managers are going to issue more antlerless hunting permits, possibly for up to 20 percent of adult does.

Wildlife managers will also temporarily supplement some feeding areas. They hope this will help draw deer away from crops and orchards.

Fitkin said feeding is a short-term solution.

“We really don’t like to feed to try to prop up animal populations for any length of time,” he said. “We’d rather see the landscape recover and have the animals in tune with whatever the existing capacity for the landscape is.”

Concentrating a large number of deer can cause more diseases to pop up. It also makes deer more vulnerable to predation and poachers.

Fitkin said deer could face a lack of winter range for several years, as shrubs slowly grow back.

Wild turkeys and western gray squirrels have also lost a significant amount of habitat.

Oregon wildlife managers say fires there have not caused major habitat problems, although the South Fork Complex Fire is burning parts of the Phillip W. Schneider Wildlife Area in northeast Oregon.

That wildlife area is also a winter range for mule deer. Officials say deer there have more places to go this winter because the fire is not as large as those in Washington.

Buzzworthy Breeding To Bring Back Bumble Bees

Preparing to inseminate a queen bee.Megan Asche — Preparing to inseminate a queen bee.
Megan Asche

By: Tom Banse, NW News Network

Some scientists are going to great lengths to help the agreeable Western bumble bee make a comeback.

You might not have noticed, but this important pollinator of both flowers and greenhouse crops has nearly disappeared from the landscape. An introduced fungal disease is suspected of decimating populations of the fat and furry Western bumble bee (Bombus occidentalis).

Researchers with the U.S. Agriculture Department have identified some surviving colonies that show disease tolerance. Now a federal bee lab in Utah is collaborating with experts at Washington State University to reestablish the native pollinator. USDA entomologist Jamie Strange is leading a captive breeding project to improve stock fitness. That even includes artificial insemination of the small insects.

“We have this instrumental insemination that we’re working on developing at this point,” explained Strange. “It is still in its infancy, but we hope that we can actually remove sperm from the males and then inject it into the females like they do with certain honey bee breeding programs.”

Strange says commercial pollination companies that truck bee colonies from farm to farm are eager for him to succeed. “As honey bees become more limited and more expensive, they’re looking for alternatives. We’re here to help them,” said Strange. “Growers are interested in using bumble bees to supplement pollination in berry crops, orchards and other places.”

“When you have both honey bees and wild bees present, you have improved yields from both working together,” observes collaborating entomologist Steve Sheppard at WSU. “There are certain crops where bumble bees are much better” pollinators, he said during a telephone interview.

Sheppard noted that British Columbia’s large industry of hot house tomato growers relies on non-native bumble bees for pollination. He said honey bees typically fly to the ceiling if released in a glass house.

In any event, sooner or later either species tends to get out. “If Jamie can develop a regionally more appropriate species… there could be a lot of interest to use it in Western states,” said Sheppard. Non-native imports “could displace or harm native bumble bees. That’s the logic to not take a species that does not occur in West and put in glass houses.”

Some states, including Oregon, do not even allow the import of non-native bumble bees to minimize the risk of unleashing disease or unwanted competition with native species.

Bumble bees and honey bees can be fairly easily distinguished. Bumble bees are fat and furry. The smaller and slimmer honey bee more closely resembles a wasp. Honey bees live in large hives, while bumble bees tend to cluster in smaller nests which do not produce surplus honey.