Pollinator Protection
Pollinators are vital to the health of our food system and planet. We use regulatory action and the courts to protect pollinators by battling toxic pesticides and fighting for legal protections for the most vulnerable among them.
Fighting to Protect Pollinators
One of our every three bites of food we eat is thanks to pollinators, yet bees and other pollinator populations are collapsing around the world. Industrial agriculture is a major cause. The destruction of habitat to make way for industrial farms, and the accompanying widespread use of toxic pesticides that may harm pollinators directly or indirectly and which contaminate the plants, soil, and water that these species depend on is a factordriving many of them to the brink of extinction.
Center for Food Safety has spent decades fighting to safeguard the most vulnerable pollinators through litigation, science, and grassroots advocacy to hold the EPA and corporations accountable while pushing for a food system that protects the species that feed us instead of poisoning them.
Impact of Pesticides on Pollinators
The most widely used insecticides in the world, neonicotinoids (or “neonics”) are systemic pesticides, meaning they are absorbed into every part of a plant: its pollen, nectar, leaves, and roots. Pollinators encounter them at every turn.
The toxicity of these chemicals is extreme. A single neonic-treated corn seed contains enough insecticide to kill more than 80,000 honey bees or one sensitive songbird. Exposure doesn’t have to be lethal to be devastating, as smaller doses can impair bees’ ability to navigate, learn, and reproduce, quietly decimating colony health over time. Neonics also persist in soil for years, contaminating groundwater and surrounding ecosystems long after application.
Coated seeds are crop seeds that have been treated with systemic pesticides, most commonly neonicotinoid insecticides and one to several fungicides, such as metalaxyl and difenoconazole. These potent chemicals are absorbed by the growing seedling and infuse the entire plant—from its roots to its fruit to its pollen—making it toxic to birds, bees, and other organisms. Just a single seed can kill a bird, and these seeds now blanket millions of acres, polluting our soil, air, and water and wiping out our birds, bees, and butterflies. Once limited to fruit and vegetable crops, neonicotinoid seed coatings have become near universal for major field crops over the past two decades. Yet numerous studies show that seed treatments provide little or no yield benefit. Farmers often have little knowledge of seed treatments, and often have trouble accessing “bare” seeds.
Currently, EPA permits pesticide-coated seeds to be sold through a loophole without any oversight. EPA uses a loophole known as the “Treated Article Exemption” to avoid registering coated seeds as pesticides, meaning there is little to no oversight once the seeds have been treated, giving rise to events like the poisoning of Mead, Nebraska. Thanks in part to the exemption, neither EPA nor any government agency tracks the amount of neonicotinoids deployed as seed treatments.
Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup and the most used pesticide in history. While primarily an herbicide designed to kill weeds, its effects on pollinators are profound and often overlooked. It destroys the flowering plants, wildflowers, and habitat that pollinators depend on for food and nesting. The dramatic expansion of glyphosate use coupled with the rise of genetically engineered crops has stripped agricultural landscapes of the biodiversity that sustained pollinator populations for generations.
The EPA found that glyphosate is likely to adversely affect 93% of threatened and endangered species, including many plants critical to pollinator habitat. As a result of a CFS lawsuit, a federal court agreed in 2022 that EPA had failed to properly assess these risks when it registered the chemical.
Our Pollinator Program
Pollinators are the backbone of global food security. Bees alone pollinate the vast majority of crop varieties that make up the world’s food supply. From almonds and avocados to cranberries and apples, your favorite food likely depends on pollinators. Without them, 70% of plants could not reproduce or provide food.
The economic value of what pollinators do is staggering: pollination services contribute more than $34 billion to U.S. agricultural annually.
Sadly, their decline is already well underway. The number of managed honey bee colonies in the U.S. has plummeted from roughly 6 million in 1947 to fewer than 2.5 million today. Migratory monarchs populations have declined by more than 80% since the 1990s. Over 70 pollinator species are currently listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.
The health of pollinators is inseparable from the health of our food system, and protecting them is not optional.
In 2013, CFS and a coalition of beekeepers and environmental groups filed suit against the EPA for its failure to protect pollinators from neonicotinoid pesticides. A landmark 2019 litigation settlement required the agency to complete full endangered species analyses of several neonic pesticides. These analyses ultimately confirmed what scientists had long known, that these chemicals are causing severe and widespread harm.
In 2014, CFS co-petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to list the iconic monarch butterfly as threatened under the ESA. After years of bureaucratic delay, CFS and allies sued to force action, which ultimately compelled FWS to propose a threatened listing in December 2024. That listing has since been stalled by the Trump administration, and CFS sued again in 2026 to force a final decision. Our fight to fully protect monarchs continues.
In a 2018 landmark legal victory with implications far beyond California, CFS and allies won protections for native bees under the California Endangered Species Act. The bees, the western, Franklin’s, Suckley cuckoo, and Crotch’s bumble bee are the first insects ever eligible for protection under California’s endangered species law.
In 2022, CFS secured a major legal victory when a federal court ruled that EPA’s registration of bee-killing pesticide sulfoxaflor was unlawful, finding that the agency had failed to assess its risks to endangered species. The ruling forced EPA back to the drawing board on a pesticide it had fast-tracked despite clear evidence of harm.
CFS won yet another historic ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2022 overturning EPA’s glyphosate registration decision. The court unanimously agreed with CFS that EPA had ignored its Endangered Species Act obligations to protect threatened and endangered species from glyphosate.
In 2023, CFS filed a formal ESA listing petition to protect the Iowa skipper, a small butterfly driven to the brink of extinction by industrial agriculture. CFS’s legal pressure compelled FWS to acknowledge in October 2024 that protections may be warranted. When the agency missed its statutory deadline to complete the review, CFS filed suit again to force a final determination.
CFS continues to monitor new pesticide approvals and other agency actions with potential threats to pollinators, and currently has ongoing challenges to many such approvals.
Pollinator Protection Litigation
Victory • Cases with Impact • Environment and Biodiversity Defense • Pesticides and Toxics • Pollinator Protection
Stopping Sulfoxaflor
Center for Food Safety challenged EPA's approval of sulfoxaflor due to risks posed to pollinators, endangered species, and the environment. The litigation continues CFS's long-standing work to ensure pesticide approvals comply with federal environmental laws and adequately protect vulnerable species. In 2022, a Federal Court found that the EPA's decision to allow new uses of sulfoxaflor on more than 200 million acres of pollinator-attractive crops was a violation of the Endangered Species Act.
Victory • Cases with Impact • Environment and Biodiversity Defense • Biodiversity Protection • Pesticides and Toxics • Pollinator Protection
Stopping Neonicotinoid Pesticides
Center for Food Safety has successfully challenged EPA’s approval of bee-toxic neonicotinoid pesticides, securing major victories for pollinators, endangered species, and the environment. Our legal work secured victories cancelling 12 neonicotinoid pesticide products as well as set out requirements for EPA to evaluate the impacts of major neonicotinoids on endangered species and implement additional safeguards.
