Roadside Best Management Practices that Benefit Pollinators: Handbook for Supporting Pollinators through Roadside Maintenance and Landscape Design

Pollinators are critical to our food supply as well as to the health of ecosystems. Wild pollinators such as the monarch butterfly and a number of bumble bee species are in decline, and beekeepers in the United States and Europe have reported significant losses of managed European honey bee colonies. Pollinator declines are attributed to loss of habitat, pesticide exposure, diseases, parasites, and effects of introduced species. Roadsides can benefit pollinators by providing foraging habitat, places to breed, nest, and overwinter, and may act as corridors, linking patches of fragmented habitat. These best management practices identify key steps that State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) can take to improve the quality of roadside habitat for pollinators including 1) adjusting roadside vegetation management techniques to accommodate pollinator resource needs, 2) enhancing and restoring native roadside vegetation to include plant materials that improve pollinator habitat, and 3) incorporating native plants and pollinator habitat needs into roadside landscape design.

Language

  • English

Media Info

  • Media Type: Digital/other
  • Features: Appendices; Figures; Maps; Photos; Tables;
  • Pagination: 94p

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01632130
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Report/Paper Numbers: FHWA-HEP-16-059
  • Contract Numbers: DTFH61-11-00033/TO 5001
  • Files: NTL, TRIS, ATRI, USDOT
  • Created Date: Apr 3 2017 12:18PM