It’s Pollinator Week Every Week at Restoring Lands! By Jake Mikic, Graduate Intern

Every year during Pollinator Week (June 16-22 this year), people across the US and around the world celebrate the creatures that help our food grow. If this all sounds familiar, I wouldn’t be surprised. Over the last ten years or so, the level of public awareness about the importance of pollinators has greatly increased. “Save The Bees” and “No Mow May” campaigns have become commonplace across neighborhoods in Southeastern Wisconsin, and it’s no secret why: pollinators rock!

Our Homegrown Heroes

Native pollinators are ecological services powerhouses! They improve the health and success rate of native plants that enrich our

soil, clean our air, filter pollutants out of the water, and provide habitat for all kinds of different animals! Wisconsin’s native pollinators also directly impact the economy. Areas absent from pollinators have reduced agricultural yields of up to 8%. Given that Wisconsin brought in around $3 billion from agricultural product exports in 2024, pollinators potentially made Wisconsin farmers up to a quarter of a billion dollars! If that’s not impressive enough, many of our state’s pollinators also pull double duty on the farm as pest control; ladybeetles, lacewings, hoverflies, and wasps all help to control pest species like aphids.

Pollinators From A to Bee

It’s often the case that when people think about pollinators, they think about bees, and when they think about bees, they are often thinking about the non-native European honey bee (Apis mellifera). In much the same way that people don’t tend to think of dairy cows as wildlife, we shouldn’t think of the honey bee the same way we think of our native bee species. While honey bees are very important, our focus at Restoring Lands is on protecting Wisconsin’s more than 400 species of native bees, including the critically endangered rusty-patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis), which is more abundant in Wisconsin than anywhere else in the world!

Pollinators come in many different forms: some flutter, some buzz, and some sting. Hummingbirds like the ruby-throated hummingbird (Archilochus colubris), the most common of Wisconsin’s 6 hummingbirds, pollinate flowers while they drink nectar. Insects like butterflies and moths are well known pollinators, but even flies, beetles, and ants play a part in pollination. Unfortunate internet folk wisdom claims that while bees are important pollinators, wasps are not. This, of course, couldn’t be further from the truth, and in fact some species of wasp are even better pollinators than some bees!

Restoring Lands (And You)

Every week is Pollinator Week at Restoring Lands. Our land stewardship staff removes hundreds of thousands of invasive plants each week, making room for native plants to flourish, improving the health of the land and providing food for our native pollinators. Where and when appropriate, Restoring Lands carries out prescribed burns, which can help create space for fire tolerant native plants that call Wisconsin home. For example, some rare and important native plants like wild lupine (Lupinus perennis) require fire to break open their tough seed coats to germinate! Speaking

of seeds, we plant thousands of trees, shrubs, and plugs in addition to seeding acres upon acres every year.

Even if you missed Pollinator Week festivities, you can still make a difference. Removing invasive plants like buckthorn, garlic mustard, and dame’s rocket from your yard can help make room for native plants. You can speed up that process by planting native plants yourself. Including more native plants in your garden will provide more of the food and habitat that these pollinators are adapted to. You don’t need to tear out your marigolds but including native plants that flower at different times of the year will keep your garden beautiful and in bloom all summer long and help out our little friends flourish.

Interested in other pollinator projects at Restoring Lands? Follow this link to see a pollinator survey! Interested in helping out with plantings or removing invasive species? Follow this link to our events page and sign up to volunteer at one of our preserves!