Pollinator Habitat Loss
The United States has lost an estimated 150 million acres of pollinator habitat since 1992. The Conservation Reserve Program is shrinking. Urban sprawl is accelerating. And the math is brutally simple: fewer flowers means fewer pollinators.
The Scale of Loss
Between 2008 and 2016, the Great Plains states lost approximately 2.6 million acres of grassland per year to crop conversion - primarily corn and soybeans driven by ethanol mandates and commodity prices. This grassland was pollinator habitat. It contained wildflower communities that supported native bee populations, monarch butterfly migration, and dozens of other pollinator species.
The loss extends beyond the Great Plains. Nationwide, the USDA estimates that the US converts roughly 1 million acres of undeveloped land to urban and suburban use annually. Each acre converted eliminates its wildflower, brush, and woodland margin habitat permanently. The total pollinator habitat loss since 1992 - from agricultural conversion, development, and management changes - is estimated at approximately 150 million acres, though exact quantification is difficult because "pollinator habitat" isn't a category tracked by the National Land Cover Database.
The loss is not evenly distributed. Agricultural regions - the Midwest corn belt, the Central Valley, the Great Plains - have seen the most severe habitat reduction. These are also the regions where managed honeybees are trucked in for pollination services, precisely because native pollinator populations can no longer sustain crop pollination alone. The relationship is circular: habitat loss reduces native pollinators, which increases dependence on managed honeybees, which are themselves stressed by the same landscape-level changes that eliminated the habitat.
The Conservation Reserve Program
The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), administered by the USDA Farm Service Agency, pays farmers to take environmentally sensitive cropland out of production and plant it with grasses, wildflowers, or trees. It is the single largest federal program that creates pollinator habitat on agricultural land.
CRP enrollment peaked at 36.8 million acres in 2007. By 2025, enrollment had declined to approximately 23 million acres - a loss of nearly 14 million acres of conservation land, much of it returning to crop production. The decline reflects a combination of factors: high commodity prices making cropland more valuable in production, program budget constraints, and policy decisions that reduced enrollment caps in successive Farm Bills.
The 2018 Farm Bill set a CRP enrollment cap of 27 million acres, later raised by subsequent legislation. But the gap between authorized cap and actual enrollment persists - not all eligible land is enrolled, and rental rates offered by the program don't always compete with crop revenue on high-quality farmland.
For pollinators specifically, the CRP's CP-42 (Pollinator Habitat) practice is the most directly relevant. CP-42 payments incentivize planting diverse wildflower mixes specifically designed for pollinator support. Enrollment in CP-42 has grown but remains a small fraction of total CRP acreage.
The Highway Corridor Opportunity
There are approximately 4.2 million miles of paved public roads in the United States. The associated rights-of-way - medians, shoulders, embankments, interchange loops - total an estimated 17 million acres. This land is publicly owned, generally mowed, and largely ecologically useless in its current state.
Converting even a fraction of highway rights-of-way from mowed turf grass to native wildflower plantings would create a continental-scale pollinator habitat network. Several states have begun pilot programs:
- Iowa - The Iowa Living Roadway Trust planted native prairie mixes along state highway corridors, documenting significant increases in pollinator abundance and diversity at planted sites compared to mowed controls.
- Minnesota - MnDOT established pollinator-friendly highway plantings along I-35 and other corridors, reducing mowing costs while supporting monarch butterfly habitat.
- Texas - TxDOT's wildflower program (originally focused on bluebonnets for aesthetic purposes) has expanded to include diverse pollinator mixes.
The economic argument is favorable: native wildflower plantings, once established, require less mowing than turf grass. The maintenance cost savings partially or fully offset the initial planting investment within 3-5 years. The pollinator benefits are an externality that costs nothing additional.
Urban Habitat
Urban and suburban areas are not ecological wastelands. Residential gardens, parks, greenways, vacant lots, and institutional landscapes can provide significant pollinator habitat - particularly for generalist species that thrive on diverse floral resources.
Research from multiple cities has documented that urban areas can support surprisingly diverse pollinator communities when floral resources are available. A study in the San Francisco Bay Area found over 70 native bee species in urban gardens. Similar findings have been reported in Chicago, Detroit, and New York City.
The limitation is scale. Urban habitat patches are small and fragmented. They support generalist pollinator species effectively but provide inadequate habitat for specialist species that require large contiguous areas of specific plant communities. Urban habitat is a supplement to landscape-scale conservation, not a substitute for it.
The Monarch Indicator
The monarch butterfly - while not a bee - serves as an indicator species for pollinator habitat health. Monarchs depend on milkweed for reproduction (it's the sole food plant for monarch caterpillars) and on nectar-producing wildflowers for adult energy during their multi-generational migration between Mexico and the northern United States.
The eastern monarch population has declined by approximately 80% since the mid-1990s, measured by overwintering colony area in central Mexico. The primary driver: loss of milkweed habitat in the Midwest agricultural landscape, where milkweed was virtually eliminated from crop fields by the adoption of glyphosate-tolerant (Roundup Ready) crops beginning in the late 1990s. The same agricultural intensification that eliminated milkweed eliminated the wildflower communities that supported native bee populations.
The monarch's decline tracks the native pollinator decline. The causes are shared. The solutions overlap.
Where The Apiary Project Stands
The Apiary Project's position on pollinator habitat loss centers on three priorities:
- CRP expansion and reform. Federal enrollment targets for the Conservation Reserve Program should increase, with dedicated funding for pollinator-specific practices (CP-42). Rental rates should be competitive enough to attract enrollment in high-value agricultural regions where habitat loss is most acute.
- Public land conversion. Highway rights-of-way, utility corridors, military installations, and other publicly owned land represent an immediate opportunity for pollinator habitat creation without taking land out of agricultural production. Federal policy should incentivize or mandate native plantings on suitable public land.
- Integrated landscape planning. Pollinator habitat is most effective when connected in corridors rather than isolated in patches. Planning for pollinator habitat should be integrated into agricultural land use policy, transportation corridor design, and urban green space development at the landscape scale.
Habitat loss is slow, cumulative, and reversible - but only with sustained investment. A wildflower planting established today begins supporting pollinators within one growing season. The biological response is rapid. The policy response has not been.