Pollinators’ threat of chemical over-use

By Stacy Gittleman

With the heralding of summer comes the pressure to have the greenest, most weed and pest-free lawn in the neighborhood. As early as March, our suburban subdivisions are abuzz with lawn and garden contractors. They blow away the remnants of fall leaves and twigs and apply herbicide and pesticide chemical treatments to lawns. Though it has become highly coveted to have a lush green lawn that is free from pests like mosquitos and grubs, suburbanites are aggravating a situation that is already in crisis – the rapid decline of beneficial insects - by unnecessarily over-treating lawns with chemical pesticides and herbicides.

Scientists warn that the Earth is undergoing a sixth mass extinction. That includes organisms from the largest mammals that swim the oceans and roam the African continent to the tiniest-winged creatures responsible for pollinating flowers crops and other vegetation. If you are noticing fewer butterflies, caterpillars, or bumblebees in your backyard or while out on a walk, it is not in your imagination. There is a staggering decline in nearly 4,000 species of wild native bees. These losses form part of a larger across-the-board trend that has been considered an insect apocalypse. Since the mid-2010s, monarch butterfly populations shrunk up to 72 percent and several native bumblebee species declined nearly 96 percent.

As grim as the situation seems, researchers and ecologists insist that there are tangible and immediate things residents from apartment dwellers to lakefront homeowners can do to lend a hand to pollinating creatures.

They include Nick Haddad, a professor of ecology at Michigan State University where he serves as a faculty member at the WK Kellogg Biological Station and Department of Integrative Biology.

He was one of the nearly two dozen authors of a recently released study published in the March 2025 issue of Science which revealed that multiple species of butterflies are in decline across the nation, according to data collected by 35 citizen science groups.

“Rapid Butterfly Declines Across the United States During the 21st Century” included records of 12.6 million individual butterflies from over 76,000 surveys across 35 monitoring programs. The study characterized overall and species-specific butterfly abundance trends across the contiguous United States. According to the study, between 2000 and 2020, total butterfly abundance fell by 22 percent across the 554 recorded species. Species-level declines were widespread, with 13 times as many species declining as the few which were increasing. The prevalence of declines throughout all regions in the United States highlights an urgent need to protect butterflies from further losses.

Haddad has studied butterflies for 30 years, including some of the rarest species in the world. Two species, Mitchell’s Satyr and the Poweshiek Skippering, have more specimens in captivity in Haddad’s lab and the John Ba Zoo in Grand Rapids than there are in the wild. The populations of these species went from hundreds in Michigan up through Manitoba, Canada to only three specimens over the last 30 years.

“The rarest butterflies number in the hundreds to the thousands globally, and they’ve already been in threat of decline and even further decline until one day they may reach extinction,” Haddad said.

This prompted him to expand his research into the broader effects of insect decline with more common butterflies. Haddad’s lab began to work with butterfly population data sets collected by academic and citizen scientists in Ohio. This month Haddad launched a program at the biological station modeled after the Ohio method called the Michigan Butterfly Survey. Right now, he is seeking citizen scientists to volunteer and train to participate.

In Ohio, observers tallied butterfly counts along the same stretch of a path or a road every week for up to 20 years. That’s where it was discovered that populations were dropping by an average of two percent per year for the last two decades. In an interest to fold this Ohio count into a broader count across the nation, he and other researchers looked at 35 data sets of population samples across the nation collected by thousands of volunteers. And the findings were staggering.

“What is most shocking is to see how general this downward trend is in butterfly numbers,” said Haddad. “The data taken from thousands of people in tens of thousands of surveys points to the fact that there is a rapid population decline in even the most common butterflies. Even the cabbage white, which is an invasive species from Europe that harms certain (cruciferous and leafy crops) is in decline. And we don’t see any end in sight.”

Though Haddad said while a few species are increasing in abundance -13 times more of other species are declining. On average, the overall butterfly population has declined by 40 percent in 20 years.

A separate MSU study published in 2024 explained that the main culprit of butterfly, bee, and insect decline are pesticides that are broadly applied in agriculture.

“In that study, we looked to the three top causes of population decline: habitat loss, climate change and the use of insecticides,” Haddad said. “We had data sets from multiple regions in the Midwest and we compared them apples to apples. And in each case, the cause that rose to the top as the main cause of population decline was the use of pesticides. Corresponding to our latest butterfly study, in the last 20 years, there has been a shift to this new class of insecticides – neonicotinoids - that are broadly spread on crops.”

Haddad pointed to three main reasons for butterfly decline. They include habitat loss, climate change, and the overuse of pesticides.

What is the importance of healthy butterfly populations? Most people regard domesticated bees as the workhorses of the agriculture industry. The common adage is that pollinators provide one out of every three bites of food. But Haddad remarked that butterflies have equal importance. For example, research from Texas showed that the presence and abundance of butterflies around cotton crops are essential for production and yield. A healthy butterfly population added up to $100 million in pollination production per year for Texas cotton.

But the use of neonics is showing up in our neighborhoods too as a method of pest control. Haddad said because there are no regulations as to how we chemically treat our lawns, there are no measurements or data sets on how chemically treated lawns and gardens impact pollinators.

“Though there are no data sets that can be measured, we know that we are using a ton of chemicals on our lawns,” Haddad said.

Haddad explained homeowners can help sustain the birds, bees, and butterflies by shrinking the square footage of their lawns and increasing the size of gardens to host native grasses, plants, and flowers. Even small changes can have an impact, Haddad advised.

“It can start with a patch of garden that contains milkweed, black-eyed Susans, and Echinacea (purple coneflower),” he said. “You can pick up simple pollinator mixes at any hardware store.”

Haddad added that residents can also plant milkweed to encourage monarch butterflies to visit, feed and lay eggs, though their numbers were down and sightings were few last year.

The professor also suggested that residents and homeowners hold off from cleaning out too much leaf cover or twigs in early spring and leaving the leaves on the ground in the fall. These areas provide habitat for insects throughout the coldest months. By cleaning them out too thoroughly, one is also blowing away the dormant eggs or larvae of beneficial insects.

At the Kellogg station, Haddad said his researchers are working on an encouraging technique called “prairie strips,” where swaths of native plants, flowers, and prairie grasses are planted alongside treated soy and corn crops. There have been sightings of caterpillars and butterflies that are “doing better than expected” even though they are planted next to pesticide-laden crops.

“This demonstrates that even if farmers take out small areas of their crops and plant for pollinators, or if suburban residents or even people living in urban settings can clear small areas for plants that attract pollinators, there can be a benefit,” Haddad said.

Haddad added that other beneficial areas in “plain sight” are highway medians that can be planted with flowering natives instead of grasses that require mowing.

For example, he pointed to the work of a colleague from Iowa who studied butterflies flourishing along a stretch of highway median planted with wildflowers. Other areas that can nurture pollinators are the 20 percent of Michigan’s agricultural lands that lay fallow in any given year when they are not producing crops.

Hadad said that crops pretreated from seed with pesticides are not producing higher crop yields, according to studies out of Canada.

“Our studies show that with the trend of planting more disease and pest-resistant genetically modified crops, there is less of a need to pretreat crops with insecticides,” Haddad said. “It is a detriment to the beneficial insects and the cost of the farmers who are locked into paying for insecticide-treated crops. The pesticides are also a detriment to the health of farmers. It is a lose-lose for everybody. This is not to say there are times when insecticide must be applied when there is an infestation of harmful insects. But in Europe and parts of Canada, these broad-spectrum pesticides have already been banned. It is too early to know if this will help stabilize or even increase butterfly numbers. We are still very early into this experiment.”

Daniel Raichel, director of pollinators and pesticides for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), delved into the dangers of neonicotinoids, or neonics for short. To offer perspective, Raichel said the thin neonic coating on a single seed of corn or soy is potent enough to kill 250,000 bees. One square foot of a neonic-treated lawn can kill one million bees. Before widespread use of neonics, beekeepers reported a 10 percent loss of their colonies each year, due to winter cold or parasitic disease. Now, keepers can lose up to 50 percent of their colonies and 2025 is set to be the worst year on record for bee colony collapse.

Neonics break down slowly in the environment and persist for many years after application in soil and water. When it rains, the poison seeps into ground, surface and eventually drinking water supplies.

The NRDC considers this class of chemicals to be the most harmful pesticide to pollinators in history, even more so than the now-banned DDT. These pesticides mimic the addictive properties of nicotine and affix to the nervous system of bees. Raichel said studies have shown that bees can become so addicted to neonics, which infiltrate even a plant’s pollen, that they begin to prefer water treated with the substance over uncontaminated water. Then, essentially, they overdose.

“Neonics attach themselves to those nerve cells in insects and they never let go, making them only want more of the chemical until they die,” Raichel said. “We have observed bees acutely poisoned with neonics and they will shake uncontrollably until they become paralyzed and die.”

Leading up to World Bee Day on May 20th, the NRDC in 2024 released an article “The Bees are Not Okay,” recognizing the non-native honeybee’s importance as a kind of domesticated livestock that has been decimated by a rapid decline beginning in the mid-2000s even though beekeepers are cultivating twice the number of beehives to stave off the large losses. The report said that weaker bee colonies will soon signal a weaker food supply.

Raichel said the plummet of insect populations is evident just by taking a long drive in the countryside.

“Think about this the next time you go out on a summer road trip and drive through a rural area,” Raichel said. “Are you using your windshield wipers to clear off the dead bugs like you used to 20 years ago? I am guessing no. Bees, butterflies, and other insects are the ecological canaries in the coal mine. They are telling us that our ecosystems are getting hollowed out from the bottom up.”

Raichel cautions that the toxic nature of neonics has a detrimental effect on the entire food chain from water-striding insects and other invertebrates that are food for fish in Great Lakes. Neonics at certain levels can kill off songbirds, which are also dropping in numbers in Michigan.

Humans are also not immune. Raichel pointed to a 2016 study from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that revealed that half of Americans had neonics in blood or urine samples. The CDC also reported that 95 percent of pregnant women tested from 2017 to 2020 had exposure to neonics in their bodies which poses concerns for neonatal neurological development.

Raichel said the only ones benefitting from these treated seeds are the big chemical corporations. And many of these companies have the farmers over a barrel.

“It's like going to the car wash and the hot wax treatment comes with the package,” explained Raichel. “You don’t need the hot wax, but you are paying for it anyway, so why not? The farmer must buy the seed from the seed dealers, which are subsidiaries of these big (chemical) companies. However, farmers are not reaping the benefits of these treated seeds. Very rarely do we see higher crop yields.”

The good news is that there is a movement to ban neonics in several states, Canada's regions, and the European Union (EU). The EU banned three main neonics in 2013 and then in 2018, it expanded the ban to the entire class of chemicals.

According to the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources (UCANR), all products containing neonics have been banned from retail shelves as of January 2025. The chemicals are also banned or restricted from residential use in Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Limiting lawn and garden neonicotinoid applications to trained professionals is intended to eliminate significant pollution from these pesticides in urban and suburban areas, protecting pollinators, aquatic organisms, and human health, according to UCANR.

Though Michigan has not banned these chemicals, Raichel advised home gardeners to check the labels of pesticides for ingredients such as acetamiprid, clothianidin, imidacloprid, dinotefuran, and thiamethoxam. They are commonly found in two-in-one or three-in-one insecticide products.

“If you see a product that feeds your rose garden and also kills bugs, odds are it contains a neonic chemical,” Raichel said. “When it comes to not using these chemicals, homeowners have to do their homework and read the labels. While a lot is happening at the federal level related to neonics, I wouldn't hold your breath (right now) for dramatic federal action in reigning in the use of these pesticides. The EPA pesticide office has consistently lagged behind Canada and Europe in regulating harmful pesticides.”

Though the precipitous drop in pollinators may be discouraging, ecologists say there are tangible and effective actions homeowners can take to task to slow the disappearance of these beneficial insects. It can be as big as ripping out parts of a lawn and replacing it with native plants and pollen-rich flowers and holding off on the insecticides. It can be as small as planting pots full of bee, butterfly or hummingbird-attracting flowers on a sunny deck, patio, or apartment balcony.

“Everyone needs to know just how valuable a backyard or small pocket of space can be for our pollinators,” said Aimee Code, pesticide director of the Xerces Society of Invertebrate Conservation. “The beauty of pollinator conservation is that it can happen at home. It need not be far away (at a national park) or in the distant long-term future. You can create a habitat this spring for bees and pollinators. And when you create a habitat, the pollinators will come.”

Code said she witnessed this on her Bend, Ore., property when she cleared a section of her lawn to accommodate native bees to nest. Code said that 70 percent of native bees need subterranean nesting spots.

Code said another pesticide commonly used to control insect populations such as mosquitoes are pyrethroids. Although mosquito spray companies say this class of pesticides is chemically derived from the chrysanthemum flower, Code said they are just as deadly for bees and butterflies. And while homeowners may want to protect their properties from mosquito-borne diseases such as West Nile Virus and the rarer Eastern Equine Encephalitis, declining mosquito populations in Michigan due to hotter, drier summers make routine spraying in most parts unnecessary.

Instead of blanket spraying for mosquitos, Code recommends only spraying targeted areas where mosquitos have been detected to carry diseases. Better yet, Code said to keep mosquito populations down, homeowners should diligently empty their property of standing water in gutters, change water in bird feeders, or install a water fountain. A running water source in one’s yard not only disrupts the mosquito egg-larvae life cycle, but also attracts bees, butterflies and birds.

Code said another good defense against mosquitos is installing a bat house away from buildings. Bats, which are also pollinators, are harmless to humans and devour hundreds of mosquitoes daily.

When it comes to our relationship with insects in general, Code said there is a misconception that they are all pests. In reality, she insisted most are beneficial but misunderstood. Instead of always reaching for a pesticide, Code advised different methods such as removing certain vegetation that causes certain insect infestations.

“Instead of reaching for a can or bottle of pesticides, get busy planting,” Code advised. She recommended planting daisies, yarrow, leaf borage and fennel around rose bushes or vegetable gardens to attract aphid-gobbling lacewings and ladybugs.

The Xerces Society provides educational resources to municipalities, including Royal Oak, which are incorporating best practices for pollinators into their sustainability plans. This includes taking on a proclamation to be recognized as a Bee City USA.

By passing a Bee City USA proclamation, Code said municipalities will pledge to add more pollinator habitats, create an integrated pest management plan that incorporates concerns about pollinators and provide outreach, education and support to its residents who want to create habitats on their properties.

“Municipalities need to keep in mind,” cautioned Code, “that signing a Bee City USA proclamation is just the beginning of creating a hospitable place for pollinators.”

In April of 2022, Royal Oak passed a Bee City USA proclamation. It recognized the importance of pollinators in the ecosystem and agriculture and pledged to create an integrated pest management system that would beautify the city’s landscapes while minimizing harm to humans and wildlife. It appointed the city’s environmental advisory board to host public educational and outreach events, encourage the creation of rain gardens filled with native plants, flowers and grasses, and maintain educational resources on the city’s website.

New to her position in Royal Oak but no stranger to the Bee City USA initiative from her work for the city of Ferndale, Royal Oak Communications Director Kara Sokol said the city is kicking off the warmer months by encouraging residents to plant for pollinators and participate in “No Mow May.” Residents are encouraged to let their grass grow and their landscaping rest from being cleared of any fall underbrush throughout the month.

“When I worked for the city of Ferndale, helping pollinators was a pet project of mine,” Sokol said. “I was horrified at what chemicals were doing to the environment and amazed to learn that something as simple as putting off mowing or cleaning out one’s garden beds could be so helpful to our pollinators.”

Sokol said a big hurdle is changing the culture and mindset that idealizes the greenest widest weed-free lawns.

“The idea of the green carpet of a lawn is not native to our area and comes from European models or having a lush English pasture on the front of one’s property,” Sokol said.

She continued: “Michigan was once covered with prairies and high grasses that were filled with wildflowers. I think many of us grew up with parents who treasured manicured lawns and believed they had to keep up with the neighbors. However, the younger generation of homeowners do not want to spend their weekends mowing their lawns. We want to plant more perennials and native flowers. The culture is starting to swing, and there are small actionable steps everyone can take in the short term.”

For those who still prefer a manicured front lawn, Sokol suggests the “mullet effect.” Named aptly for the 1980s hairstyle, residents can keep their front yards trimmed and neat, and let their backyards take on more natural, wilder conditions such as less mowing, eliminating the use of pesticides and herbicides, and raking the leaves and underbrush from the front yard into the back.

Sokol said the challenge is in educating privately contracted lawn care companies. To make the biggest profit, most services want to get a jump on the season and can be seen pretreating lawns with pesticides and herbicides and cleaning away leaves and underbrush as early as March.

Sokol said she would eventually like to see these companies market themselves as more eco-friendly. But Sokol said most companies will not sign on clients unless they agree to begin their service very early in the season.

“That would be an incredible thing, but I’m just not seeing it yet,” Sokol said.

Once residents commit to creating a more pollinator-friendly back or front yard, they can register and join a network of thousands of other Americans committing to do the same with the Homegrown National Parks program at homegrownnationalpark.org. Nationwide, over 43,000 families and individuals have registered their yards into the program covering nearly 105,000 acres. In Michigan, about 1,800 have registered their backyards covering a little over 3,100 acres. Potentially, there are 20 million acres of suburban and developed land that can become ecologically friendly to pollinators.

The project was co-founded in 2021 by University of Delaware Entomology Professor Douglas Tallamy on the notion that there are millions of acres of backyards in the United States that have the restorative potential to become natural habitats for pollinators and other beneficial wildlife.

When Tallamy and his wife purchased a homestead on a former hay farm in southeastern Pennsylvania 20 years ago, the 10-acre property was overgrown with invasive, exotic plants such as autumn olive and oriental bittersweet. Over the years, the couple restored the land with native plants, beneficial oak tree groves, and gardens abundant with pollinating flowers.

Tallamy’s research concludes that every piece of land matters to protect pollinators, manage watersheds, absorb carbon, and support a healthy food web.

Lawns, he insisted, do none of these things.

"If you're going to own a piece of the earth, you've got to take care of it," Tallamy said. "Lawns are the worst plant for carbon sequestration. Traditional grass landscapes do nothing to pull carbon from the atmosphere or support local wildlife. In contrast, native plants and diverse ecosystems can dramatically improve environmental health.”

Tallamy advises homeowners to plant vegetation that will attract caterpillars, which are the “meat and potatoes” for food webs and hungry songbirds.

Looking at this from a local perspective, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources recommends 10 or more blooming species with at least three of these species blooming at any phase of the growth period between frosts for a successful pollinator garden. While milkweeds such as common milkweed and butterfly milkweed are essential for attracting monarchs, gardens should also include perennials such as wild bergamot, purple coneflower, and black-eyed Susan for attracting various butterflies and moths.

Gardens and landscapes should also include native grasses such as little blue stem or Indian grass for habitat.

Tallamy said the Homegrown National Park movement represents a cultural shift to make homeowners understand that their residence is not outside of the ecosystem but a part of it.

"What happens on your property doesn't stay on your property,” Tallamy said. “It either helps or hurts the local ecosystem. By reimagining our relationship with the land, we can collectively rebuild the intricate web of life, one backyard at a time.”

One organization that has taken Tallamy’s message to heart is the Rochester Pollinator Society, founded by artist, marketing strategist, and civic leader turned ecologist Marilyn Trent.

Trent served on the board of the Rochester Downtown Development Authority for 15 years. Under her leadership, she facilitated initiatives to install more rain gardens and replace some lawns around the city’s municipal buildings and parks with butterfly gardens.

In 2022, Rochester was designated by the National Wildlife Federation as a Monarch Champion City for its pledged commitment to provide more habitat for these winged creatures.

Trent founded the Rochester Pollinators Society in 2019 to create more habitat for monarch butterflies in town. Over the years, the organization has recruited 250 volunteers, sold over 60,000 milkweed and native plant species, and donated thousands of other natives to schools and other nonprofit organizations. The organization also advised the Portage Chain of Lakes Association about ideal plantings for lakefront homeowners to not only attract beneficial insects but to use plants to filter nutrients and other contaminants that contribute to harmful algal blooms.

The society is taking orders for native plants and grasses on its website at rochesterpollinators.org and will be having a native plant sale on May 17 at the Rochester Farmer’s Market.

This summer, Rochester Pollinators will also inaugurate the city’s 1,000 square-foot mini forest project located behind the community garden. In addition to flowers and native plants, native trees, especially oaks, serve as “vertical pollinator habitats” capable of supporting hundreds and thousands of beneficial insects and birds.

Drawing on a method devised in Japan and replicated in cities around the world, the mini forests will become a self-sustaining ecosystem in three years.

Ann Arbor already has a mini forest, and a 30,000-square-foot mini forest is planned for Warren.

Trent said on one’s property, shrinking your lawn and growing more native grasses and plants is within everyone’s reach.

“Everyone wants to be an environmentalist or save the elephants or polar bears,” Trent said. “You can donate money and send it away and may not see the results. But building habitats for bees, butterflies, caterpillars and birds is something you can do and see the results. Right in your backyard.”