In Somerville, all pollinators are local
City gets serious about extending them a welcome
Amid rising concern nationwide about declining numbers of insect pollinators, Somerville is determined to be part of the solution.
Believing that even thickly populated urban communities have a vital role to play in addressing ecological challenges, the city has launched the creation of a Pollinator Action Plan.
The plan, to be developed by an expert team including biologists, horticulturalists, and landscape architects, will detail how the city and community members can build and enhance habitat suitable for bees, butterflies, beetles, and other pollinators.
City officials said other communities in the US — including several in Massachusetts — have prepared such plans, but to their knowledge none with a population as dense as Somerville’s.
“In Somerville, we are committed to supporting the health of all our residents, human and non-human alike,” said Mayor Katjana Ballantyne, who is taking an active role in the initiative. “Municipalities have the power, and the responsibility, to support pollinators through our policies, designs, and public engagement.
“We think this can be a real model for other densely populated cities that want to be part of building a healthier urban ecosystem that supports pollinators,” said Luisa Oliveira, Somerville’s director of public space and urban forestry.
Oliveira said the plan, funded through $100,000 budgeted by the city, will likely include recommendations for plantings the city can install in its parks and other public places, and initiatives, including pilot projects, to encourage private gardeners to do their part.
The city is forming a resident advisory committee to assist in creating the plan and engaging the public in the process, according to Oliveira, who credited community activists with making the crisis in pollinator decline a focus of concern for city staff.
Somerville has taken previous actions to support its pollinators and overall natural ecosystem, including adopting a 2021 ordinance — proposed by Ballantyne as a city councilor — requiring the inclusion of certain percentages of native species in plantings on city land, and a 2019 ordinance limiting removal of healthy trees on private property.
The city has also funded demonstration pollinator gardens, and hosted scientific research and public education activities by the Tufts Pollinator Initiative, a community-based conservation program run by Tufts University graduate students that supports urban pollinators.
Oliveira said the action plan will build on those efforts by enlisting specialists to pinpoint specific insects and plants the city can target to boost pollination. “It’s not enough to say we are going to plant native species.
We need to understand which pollinators we have in the city and which of the plants nourish them.”
Nicholas Dorian, a PhD candidate in biology at Tufts and cofounder and co-president of the Tufts Pollinator Initiative, said there is an urgency to supporting pollinators.
“About 75 percent of the food crops in the world — including apples, coffee, and blueberries — depend on pollination by animals to be produced,” said the Medford resident. “In recent years, scientists have documented alarming declines in the population of some of these pollinators,” with habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change believed to be primary causes.
“Somerville’s plan can provide an important precedent for how cities can engage community members in conservation,” Dorian said, calling public involvement crucial to the success of any ecological initiative in an urban setting.
Dorian is also excited at the prospect the plan will increase Somerville’s pollinator habitat, including by inspiring residents to plant gardens.
“The easiest thing someone can do to support a pollinator is to plant flowers and not treat those flowers with pesticides,” he said. “It can be as small as a single sunflower, or it can be a small flower garden in your front yard.”
“I think this has to happen,” Oliveira said of public and private efforts to support pollinators. “We need to start thinking this way given the ecological challenge in front of us right now in this moment.”