PelhamToday received the following letter on the importance of bees to human survival.
It's not the declaration your used to me talking about, but it's an issue crucial to our survival, nonetheless.
I wear proudly on the right side of my chest a tattoo of a bee. I find bees both interesting and fascinating. Like the advocates for mental health, poverty and addiction, the bee is a loyal servant. People are afraid of bees and, like the advocates for mental health, poverty and addiction, they are misunderstood. However, the bees have a stinger for defence purposes. Like the advocates for mental health, homelessness and addiction, people will frantically swat (attack) the bee because they misunderstand bees. Many of the advocates are regularly attacked for standing behind the issues of mental health, poverty and addiction for people's misunderstandings of these issues.
But now we come back to the stinger example. The bee's tool to guard the hive, just like the advocates fighting for the state of emergency on mental health, poverty and addiction used our tool of the declaration to protect community members.
However, the misunderstood bee is apart of the biodiversity crucial to our survival on Mother Earth.
Bees reverse biodiversity decline. Declining biodiversity means lower ecosystem productivity (the amount of food energy converted into the biomass). Bees also provide a wide range of ecosystem services and one-third of the world's food production depends on bees. Bees provide us with high quality food through pollination (which allows plants to create stronger offspring- one of the way plants can produce offspring is by making seeds) The ecosystem services that bees provide ultimately contribute to the well-being of people.
As it currently stands, there are approximately 82 bee cities in Canada including Niagara Falls and St. Catharines.
I would like to call on all Niagara-area municipalities to declare their municipality a Bee City/Town and support pollinator protection by joining the Bee City Canada network! It is crucial that municipalities establish healthy pollinator habits in their boundaries. It imperative that we provide the necessary conditions (food sources/habitat) on which bees depend for their survival, because it ultimately comes down to our survival.
More information about the Bee City Canada network can be found via this link: https://beecitycanada.org/
Steven Soos
Welland
