This year for Pollinator Week (6/17 – 6/23) we’re doing a 7-part series about native pollinators on Edisto Island!
We, as a civilization, need pollinators. They keep the gears of agricultural and ecosystem services turning behind the scenes, rendering an invaluable service to plants, which yield these values to us. Pollinators need our help. Thankfully, pollinators are everywhere and anyone can lend them a helping wherever they are.
Pollinators are a diverse group of animals adapted to a wide range on ecosystems, habitats, and environmental conditions. They’re able to fend for themselves and don’t need any special treatment as a whole. However, they are all being hit from every angle with overwhelming forces they can’t overcome on their own. The biggest threats to pollinators right now are misuse of insecticides and habitat loss. As an individual, these threats are easy to dissipate at the small scale. Don’t fog for mosquitos, don’t spray insecticides in your garden, leave leaf litter around the edge of your yard, create a brush pile, leave dead flower stems alone, don’t mow as often, and plant native plants where ever you can.
However, the biggest contributor to both these threats in the Lowcountry is suburban sprawl. The best way to curb sprawl is by supporting local land conservation efforts. Land conservation is what we do here at EIOLT. We protect dirt from destruction. We save special places for tomorrow. We humans rely on natural ecosystems and agricultural crops for food and natural resources. Food crops and natural ecosystems need pollinators. Pollinators need native plants. Native plants need soil. Soil is the land. In order to protect our native pollinators and safeguard our futures, we need to first protect the land that we all rely on. Protect places for plants, for pollinators, for people, for the future, forever. The work of the Edisto Island Open Land Trust protects the capacity of land to support pollinator habitat, our native plants, our wildlife, our natural resource economy, and the intrinsic beauty of Edisto Island. We need your help to conserve land, and everything that relies upon it. If you’re not a member already, please considering joining EIOLT and, if you are, thank you, sincerely, for all that do to protect the one-of-a-kind Edisto Island.
