Latest research on biodiversity in agricultural landscapes suggests that pollinating insects (especially wild bees and butterflies) are not sufficiently protected from the effects of plant protection product applications in current risk assessment and risk management schemes.
Starting in November 2015, ecotox consult will be working together with ecoco GbR (Karlsruhe) and the Department of Bioscience of the Aarhus University (Ronde, Denmark) on the research and development project Z 6 – 93 401/60 (FKZ: 3715 64 409 0) of the German Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt, Dessau-Roßlau) aiming to provide a basis for the revision of risk assessment and risk management schemes for the protection of wild pollinators from the effects of plant protection products.
As part of this project, the current EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) scientific opinions and draft guidance for the risk assessment of bees and terrestrial non-target arthropods will be reviewed for deficits with respect to the protection of wild pollinators. Furthermore, data on ecology, exposure and toxicological sensitivity of wild pollinators will be collected. Based on this data, ecologically tolerable thresholds will be derived and the relative sensitivity of different groups of wild pollinators in crop-specific landscape scenarios will be determined. With this information, criteria for the risk assessment scheme on wild pollinating insects as well as recommendations for the improvement of potential risk management options will be developed.
We are looking forward to an exciting project in cooperation with the German UBA and our project partners. Feel free to contact us for more information.
