Minnesota Agencies

The Team is to provide operational support, ensure interagency coordination, develop cross agency policies and programs, and report regularly on progress.

The Interagency Pollinator Protection Team shall develop statewide pollinator goals and metrics and report on the progress toward those goals in a report to the Environmental Quality Board (EQB) by December 1 of each year. The report shall include recommendations for pollinator policy, research needs, and budget recommendations.

Noting that bees and other pollinator populations have been in decline in Minnesota and across the country due to a variety of pressures including habitat loss, pesticides, diseases, and parasites, Governor Dayton announced on August 25, 2016 that he was directing the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) to take immediate action to implement many of the recommendations spelled out in the Department's (link here) Special Registration Review of Neonicotinoid Pesticides. The August 2016 report is based on the department's two-year state review of hundreds of scientific studies that concluded neonicotinoid pesticides were harmful to honey bees and other pollinators.

The Governor's order requires action from various state agencies, including directing the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board to establish an Interagency Pollinator Protection Team.

The order creates some of the strictest regulations for pesticide use in any state. The new rules apply only to commercial pesticide applications, not to home use. In making the announcement at the Minnesota State Fair, the governor stressed the importance of pollinators to the state's $90 billion agriculture sector.

The Interagency Pollinator Protection Team shall consist of designees of the Departments of Administration, Agriculture, Corrections, Education, Health, Natural Resources, Transportation, Board of Water and Soil Resources, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and the Minnesota Zoo.

Member agencies of the EQB will contribute available staff resources as requested by the EQB Chair for purposes of carrying out the work directed by the Executive Order.

Minnesota Environmental Quality Board