Norway builds a highway for bees, and the US - for butterflies

    An initiative group of Oslo residents, called Bybi, is engaged in a project to create “bee highways” in their city. Such an initiative unusual for modern megacities implies the creation of a kind of “green corridor” consisting of sunflower and other plants that are rich in nectar valuable for bees. With the help of such a “highway”, members of the initiative group, headed by Agnes Lyche Melvaer (Agnes Lyche Melvaer), count on how to save the population of bees living near the capital of Norway, and to draw public attention to this issue.

    The approximate location of the “bee highway” looks like this on the map:

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    Screenshot of the site page pollinatorpassasjen.no
    Officials, public and private companies, as well as ordinary Oslo residents, are already taking part in the project. A special site has been created for everyone who is not indifferent to the project (it is only in Norwegian language so far). The initiative itself implies that the owners of private houses and public buildings will have to arrange on their roof something like open flower gardens that could be used by bees, and even bee hives. Already on the roof of a 12-story ultramodern building in Oslo, the owners equipped a part of the roof under the flower garden and put several beehives. Despite its specific location, approximately 45,000 bees took root there.

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    Bee hive on the roof of an office building in Oslo. Photo PIERRE-HENRY DESHAYES / AFP / Getty Images
    In the United States in May of this year, they began implementing an idea similar to the Norwegian one. The White House Commission (its name sounds almost like the name of a special unit - Pollinator Health Task Force) has published a document ( pdf) entitled “National Strategy for the Support of the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators” (NATIONAL STRATEGY TO PROMOTE THE HEALTH OF HONEY BEES AND OTHER POLLINATORS), which implies that the creation of a 1,500-mile green corridor should begin within this year (about 2400 km). The corridor will be designed for the safe migration of Monarch butterflies from Mexico to Minnesota. Officials hope that this step will increase the population of butterflies and other insects that are involved in pollination of plants. Such an emergency measure on the part of the presidential administration was made public, as biologists sounded the alarm - over the past few years, the population of butterflies of this species has declined in America by almost 90%.

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