Preventing a Risk/Risk Trade-off: An Analysis of the Measures Necessary to Increase U.S. Pollinator Numbers

This Note will proceed in four parts. Part II will discuss the importance of pollinators and the possible reasons for their declining numbers. Part III will delve into the current and proposed actions to increase pollinator populations that are taking place in the United States. Part IV will then discuss the generally desired and widely accepted solution: a ban on neonicotinoids. This Part will introduce the implementation and results of a neonicotinoid ban in the European Union, and the risk/risk trade-off presented by a neonicotinoid ban. Finally, Part V will compile the solutions discussed in Parts III and IV, and present possible legal and administrative solutions that can be put in place to protect bees, modeled after the legal actions that have successfully increased monarch butterfly populations while avoiding the issues the European Union faced with its neonicotinoid ban. Part V will conclude that banning neonicotinoids is not the save-all solution to pollinator decline, and propose that focusing on a multiplicity of avenues—both legal and administrative—that tackle the many reasons why pollinator populations are in decline is more likely to increase pollinator numbers than focusing on one single facto