Birds, bats, bees, butterflies, beetles, and other small mammals that pollinate plants are responsible for bringing us one out of every three bites of food. They also sustain our ecosystems and produce our natural resources by helping plants reproduce.

Pesticides, climate change, and monoculture are believed to be the most likely explications to the decline of pollinators as more and more species of insects disappear. Extra scary, is that is difficult to see what is happening, before it could be too late. It is impossible to count insects in the same way that we can count the number of elephants, but we will notice when they are gone, and our supply of plant based food is in shortage. Besides the fact that we humans and other omnivores and herbivores mammals will be severely affected from a decline of insects, it will also greatly affects all animals that have insects as their primary food source. Also certain flowering plants live in a close symbiosis with specific pollinators, which means that if these insects die out, the plants will as well.

School Project – Save the Queen
Save the Queen is The Perfect World Foundation’s school project. In this project, together with the Botanical Gardens in Gothenburg, we have compiled educational material that will teach children (and adults) about pollinators, their importance, and what we all can do to help and protect them. The Perfect World representatives from the project visit schools and talk to pupils about how important insects are to us all. And to creatively and playfully increase students’ knowledge about pollinators, also invited the children to a competition to build the best and most beautiful insect hotel.

Beekeeping project – Elephants and Honeybees

Our fundraising and donations in benefit of pollinators include among many, support for a beekeeping project in South Africa. The conflict between elephants and farmers, caused by elephants passing through cultivated fields and destroying farmers' crops and livelihoods, has escalated in Africa. The project aims to train farmers to become beekeepers. And the hives are place in strategic places to create ‘beehive fences’ to lead elephants away from farmlands – because a bit unexpected, elephants are actually afraid of bees. The beekeeping project has calmed down the conflict between farmers and elephants and has reduced the destruction of cultivated crops… and in addition the farmers now have honey to sell. The beehive fences also protect habitats such as forests from the migratory elephants, which reduce the risk of desertification and in addition trees very efficiently absorb atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), which counteract global warming.

It is fairly easy to help the pollinators, here are some examples:

• Use pollinator friendly pesticides you use in your garden.
• Plant flowering plants that bloom during long periods of time, to provide lots of nectar – pollinator food.
• Choose organic and locally grown food, to the extent that is doable for you. This reduces the use of pesticides and preservatives, and emission from transportation.
• Leave parts of your garden to grow and flower freely. Insects love to have untouched spaces, unmanaged by gardeners.
• Build an insect hotel and place it in your garden or on your balcony, make sure that there are flowering plants and water close by, so that the pollinators can eat and drink.

With us you can also Volunteer Travel and experience wildlife conservation projects around the world. Donations and sponsoring partnerships are crucial for us to continue our work to save the moon bears.