After the war on climate, the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and the backing of coal, the Trump administration has decided to allow the use of pesticides considered dangerous to bees and other pollinators.
It was 2014 when Obama, in a memorandum, stressed the importance of protecting bees and other pollinators from the decline recorded at a global level. In the months that followed, a task force was established and the director of the National Wildlife Refuge System (the network of protected areas and national parks in the United States) published a national strategy for banning neonicotinoids and genetically modified seeds within American protected areas. This led to the ban in 2016 on neonicotinoids, including in seed treatment.
Read also: Europa, vietati i pesticidi neonicotinoidi pericolosi per le api e gli insetti impollinatori
But in August 2018, as has happened in many other cases, the current administration decided to once again go against science and common sense and permit the use of neonicotinoids in agricultural areas within protected areas, effectively revoking the 2014 ban.
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"There is no room for industrial agriculture in areas dedicated to the conservation of biodiversity and the protection of the most vulnerable species, such as pollinators like bees and monarch butterflies," Jamie Rappaport Clark, president of Defenders of Wildlife, commented at the time. "The decision by the Trump administration to allow the use of toxic substances and genetically modified crops within our national parks and nature reserves is an insult."
The memorandum written by the current deputy director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Greg Sheehan, states that the use of these substances will be assessed on a case-by-case basis in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act (the body of environmental protection laws of the United States) and protected area policies. In short, a paradox in terms, an oxymoron. Because allowing the use of substances that the scientific community considers, at various levels, to be toxic and dangerous for pollinating insects has nothing to do with "protecting" the environment. Least of all in protected areas.
An inexplicable decision, given that there are a great many studies and expert opinions that consider these substances dangerous and that led the European Commission to ban their use last April across the entire European territory. It is worth noting that the vote was not unanimous despite everything, and that Romania, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Denmark chose to vote against.