Six months have passed since France introduced an historic ban on bee-killing pesticides.
And pesticide giants like Bayer are still fighting tooth-and-nail to get it overturned. First they filed a lawsuit, and you can bet they won’t stop there.
Over 300,000 bee colonies have died in France so far. The annual death rates of bees in some areas has been as high as 80%. Honey production has crashed to the lowest level in 20 years.
But France’s ban on neonics sets a groundbreaking precedent to protect the bees, and that’s why we have to defend it. But to win, we need to be ready for whatever big companies throw at us, and we’re hoping you can make a special commitment to make this happen.
Will you please make a donation to support the movement to save the bees?
We made history when France introduced an outright ban on neonics. It’s above and beyond EU restrictions and it’s exactly what scientists have been demanding for years if we want to save our pollinators.
This gave our fight to save the bees the biggest boost ever.
Now, we have a choice to make. We can sit back while corporate lobbyists block this ban, or we can fight to protect it.
The pesticide giants have already tried to challenge the ban in court, but they were told point blank that the ban is entirely allowed under European law. They’re using this tactic to delay the ban so they can keep using the bee-killing pesticides. The lawsuit was thrown out -- but we can’t rest easy.
The attacks and tactics by pesticide giants like Bayer could get much worse. And to take them on, we need to be able to act quickly when moments call for it, and carry out attention-grabbing tactics that get under the skin of these companies.
Will you make a donation to support the movement to save the bees?
The fight to save the bees is getting more urgent every week. Last year, one study discovered that neonics aren’t just killing bees that ingest toxins, they’re killing birds too. Some butterfly populations in Britain declined by 60% in just one decade -- over the same period that neonics use increased at its fastest-ever rate.
The SumOfUs community has been at the forefront of the movement to save the bees, and the tide is finally turning.
There are moratoriums on neonics in the EU, a ban in the U.S. State of Maryland, and two of Canada’s largest provinces are phasing out neonics. Scotts Miracle-Gro, Lowe’s, and Home Depot, a few of the USA’s largest lawn and garden chemical companies, are also turning completely away from these pesticides.
None of this would’ve happened without people like you, standing together to take on the world’s biggest corporations to protect our bees. Over the next six to twelve months, we’ll be working to defend France’s ban and riding the momentum into a global ban. We’ll also be turning our attention to supermarket giants -- pushing them to phase out neonics in countries around the world like the US, Canada, and Australia.
There’s a lot of work to do. Our wins in the past show us that saving the bees is well within our grasp, but we need you. And if you make a special monthly donation today, it edges our community closer to success.
Make a donation to save the bees now.