How the Métis Nation of Alberta is surveying land for signs of bumblebees at risk
This story is part of the Prairies Climate Change Project, a joint initiative between CBC Edmonton and CBC Saskatchewan that focuses on weather and our changing climate.
Roaming a stretch of land in Lamont County, members of the Métis Nation of Alberta’s conservation and climate change department gather bumblebees in vials.
The aim is to determine which species call the area home, and which plants they prefer for gathering pollen.
Once captured, the bumblebees are put on ice. After they’re counted, they’re released back onto the land.
“We kind of just wander around until we see certain things in bloom, and then we might sit and wait a bit to see if anything lands there, or you might just come along to good activity on flowers,” said Tiffani Harrison, conservation co-ordinator with Otipemisiwak Métis Government, the elected body which represents Métis people in Alberta.
The land being surveyed, about 70 kilometres east of Edmonton, is the MNA’s Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA).
The Otipemisiwak Métis Government recently received $240,000 through Environment and Climate Change Canada for the bumblebee survey project, under funding earmarked for monitoring and restoring at-risk species.
In Canada, seven bumblebee species are at risk, and two of them are native to central Alberta: Bombus terricola — the yellow-banded bumblebee — and Bombus bohemicus, the gypsy cuckoo bumblebee.
The team has done seven surveys to date, finding around 800 bumblebees on the property. Of the total, 15 yellow-banded bumblebees and one gypsy cuckoo bumblebee have been identified.
“Detecting the presence of species at risk is a really important first step, so luckily we were able to do that very easily last year with minimal effort, just out of sheer luck,” said Harrison, referring to a preliminary survey conducted in 2023.
She said the survey team is learning which plants the bees prefer, and about their nesting habits. The information will help the MNA develop a management plan for the IPCA to ensure the bumblebees don’t disappear from the landscape.
Climate change impacting bees
Because of climate change, summers are arriving earlier, and are hotter and drier. That can have detrimental impacts on plants, animals and insects in nature — including bumblebees.
“Very simply, bumblebees are not very heat-tolerant,” said Jeremy Kerr, a professor of biology at the University of Ottawa.
“A long time ago — maybe 30 million years ago — [bumblebees] evolved under cool or tempered conditions and they have never really … evolved the capacity to do well in really hot weather.”
Kerr said it’s not necessarily the long-term, slow changes to the climate that poses a risk to bumblebees. Rather, it’s the frequency of extreme weather.
“If you want to try to understand why bumblebee species are declining, you’ve really got to look at the severity and frequency of temperature extremes,” he said.
Where heat waves are happening more frequently, or they are becoming more severe, “we are seeing bumblebee species populations declining or beginning to disappear,” Kerr said.
Harrison said climate change may also be altering the change of seasons, with spring arriving much earlier than it previously did. This isn’t good news for delicate ecosystems.
“If we have spring starting earlier, because it’s getting hotter … bumblebees might emerge, thinking it’s time to go, but no plants have actually started blooming yet,” she said.
“There is a mismatch of timing of when bumblebees are emerging and plants and resources are actually available for them to use. That’s a huge problem.”
What that means is that queen bumblebees might have a hard time establishing colonies.
Kerr says the threat to bumblebee species is not immediate. Rather, the concern is that climate change can erode species populations over time.
He gave the example of an “almost certainly extinct” bumblebee: Bombus franklini, known as Franklin’s bumblebee.
“It had the misfortune of living in the Central Valley in California, which is a place that is intensely agricultural, so it’s been hit by habitat loss and probably pesticide use, and may have disappeared as much as 15 to 20 years ago,” said Kerr.
Kerr hopes that what’s done now can help prevent other bumblebee species from disappearing.
“Extinctions are just a sad comment that we’re doing something needlessly wrong in the environment and we can do better than that,” said Kerr.
“Nature is a beautiful thing, and we shouldn’t be causing it to become less beautiful.”
On Métis land
In 2019, the Métis Nation of Alberta bought 158 acres of land from Ducks Unlimited Canada after the conservation organization had restored the property’s wetlands and grasslands.
The property is the MNA’s first Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area.
“[The citizens] wanted to have a place to gather and practise traditions and culture, and that can include collecting medicines and berries and hunting and fishing,” said Jordan York, conservation manager with Otipemisiwak Métis Government.
IPCAs are a relatively new concept, originally outlined in a 2018 federal report by the Indigenous Circle of Experts (ICE), which says the protected areas should be conserved by nearby Indigenous communities and used to promote traditional beliefs and practices.
This year alone, the federal government has funded 42 IPCAs across the country. To date, 92 Indigenous communities have received funding to create protected and conserved areas.
In addition to counting bumblebees, the MNA is using cameras and audio trackers to monitor for a variety of animals, including birds, bats, moose, deer, coyotes, and porcupine.
Members are also randomly placing coverboards — essentially boards of wood — throughout the site, to track reptiles and amphibians that might make their homes under them.
What can you do to protect bumblebees?
Since 2022, the Otipemisiwak Métis Government’s climate change department has been running a native bee conservation program. It’s designed to engage Métis people in bee conservation and support Alberta’s native bees.
“There’s been so much excitement about bees,” York said about the program.
“We provide them with wildflowers to plant on their properties and a bee box that they can set up so they can look at tunnel nesting bees … and learn a little bit about bees here in the province.”
The program has proven so popular that the MNA is distributing the native bee kits through a raffle.
For everyone else, Kerr said one of the best things people can do to support bumblebees is to plant as many native plants on their property as possible.
“I go out there and look at it, and is it colourful and are the colours different? That’s the first test, but then what I do is I close my eyes,” Kerr said.
“If you’re thinking about listening to your garden as well as looking at it, then what you’re probably hearing are the bees visiting the garden, going from flower to flower.”
Harrison said another thing that can help is to keep your lawn a little unkempt.
“Trimming those back in the fall or not raking your leaves, bees overwinter right under those some time – it’s a great excuse to leave your lawn a little messy.”
The Métis Nation of Alberta is surveying their Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area in Lamont County, to track bumblebee species. Researchers say changes to our seasons, and rising temperatures due to climate change are putting some bumblebee species at risk.
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