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People across North America are progressing pollinator conservation every day. We at the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service are proud to be part of that progress. Our Center for Pollinator Conservation has two new, and updated, tools to help you find intersections between your conservation work, land management priorities and pollinator species. You can use the North American Bee Distribution Tool to assess bee distribution and richness, as well as check the at-risk status for species across North America. The Monarch Conservation Opportunities Tool connects your land management activities with conservation needs for the monarch butterfly. Take a moment to learn more about these tools.
North American Bee Distribution Tool
This interactive portal, informally known as the Bee Tool, allows for rapid assessment of apparent bee species richness and distribution throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico. It is comprised of a central map that shows a visual collection of where and when various bee species were identified across the landscape. It incorporates species occurrence data of six families of bees by using data provided by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, as well as conservation status rankings which are provided by NatureServe. This tool also shows graphs and charts, along with species information in a table. Users typically interact with the Bee Tool by filtering the occurrence records by time, geographic location, taxonomy or conservation status. The figures update instantaneously based on filters chosen, as well as the total number of occurrences.
The Bee Tool was developed as part of an international pollinator conservation project through the Commission for Environmental Cooperation. The commission provides opportunities for international collaboration between Canada, Mexico and the United States on environmental issues of common interest. By sharing best practices and strategies to organize and mobilize native bee inventory and monitoring, this tool is laying a foundation for more robust and standardized data repositories to inform conservation actions across the continent.
Monarch Conservation Opportunities Tool
This tool is used to refine ongoing monarch butterfly conservation efforts across the huge expanse of North America. This strategic planning tool also helps you to map out future conservation opportunities and better allocate your resources. We hope this tool supports prioritization of your work, unlocks collaborative opportunities with partners and identifies co-benefits for the other at-risk species and multiple land uses under consideration.
The Monarch Conservation Opportunities Tool is a scalable cloud-based mapper that is designed to help find intersections between your species and land management priorities, as well as monarch butterflies and existing habitat. The tool leverages existing publicly available species and habitat data, alongside landscape-scale conservation blueprints and other planning tools. Data layers which are relevant to your work can be uploaded to visualize and help focus collective capacity to get the best benefit for monarch and other key target species or planned activities.
The Center for Pollinator Conservation promotes working together to address declining pollinator populations in North America. This national center is a place for land managers, decision and policy makers, scientists, program leaders and others to explore, coordinate and share best practices and approaches. We work collaboratively with partners to implement conservation that benefits pollinator species.
We encourage everyone to play an active role in providing habitat for pollinators. By fostering connections to pollinators, you can accomplish other competing priority work with limited capacity.
Learn more, and access these tools, at the Center for Pollinator Conservation.
