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Pollinators around the w-tr4I says butterfly Volunteers provides oases of food 2nd water multiplied 16-fold February BY BRUCE HENDERSON bhendenon@charlotteobserver.com com he bees and but- terflies flitting through your yard this summer don't hint at a dark reality: The pollinators that feed the world are starving. More than 200,000 species, mostly insects, carry pollen grains from male to female parts of flowers for reproduction. Three- quarters of the globe's food crops rely on pollinators. But up to 40 percent - chiefly bees and butter- flies - face extinction, the United Nations reported earlier this year. Habitat losses leave too few of the native plants that feed' pollinators and nurture their young. Pesticides, invasive species, disease and climate change all take tolls. Charlotte is part of the growing response to a global crisis. Earlier this year the Charlotte -based N.C. Wild- life Federation launched the Butterfly Highway. The program recruits volunteers to create a network of oas- es for the hardworking insects. The response was un- expected. The program began in February with 50 volunteers in west Char- lotte. By June more than 800 people had signed on statewide, tending plots from apartment balconies to 100 -acre farms. "This is something that anyone can do because it doe.m't cost any money, R SA VIN BFESn F � Resting on a honeysuckle vine, an Eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly, the state butterfly of North Carolina, warms up near a Butterfly Highway. and you can belong to a bigger network," said the federation's Angel Hjard- ing, a UNC Charlotte doctoral student who leads the program. The basics are simple: Tend native plants; offer water; avoid insecticide use. The plight of pollinators is gaining international attention. Before the UN's jarring report, the Obama administration announced a plan last year to make 7 million acres of federal land more pollinator - friendly. There's also a federally sanctioned National Pollinator Week, which began June 20. Just as striking is that ordinary people want to help. The Asheville -based nonprofit Bee City USA, which works to raise awareness of pollinators, got its start in 2012. Now 22 U.S. cities, including Matthews, are Bee Cities and 13 university campus- es have signed up to hold public awareness events. "The sad news is that because pollinators are so small and work so hard and go about their busi- ness, they just haven't been noticed," said foun- der Phyllis Stiles. "People have gotten the memo that no bees, no food." Stiles was named U.S. advocate of the year in 2015 by the Pollinator . Partnership, the largest nonprofit in the field. But after z`ears of work for said. In Chatham County, west of Raleigh, extension agent Debbie Roos cre- ated a demonstration pollination garden in 2008. Since then, she's led more than 100 garden, tours while presenting programs across the state. "People come to my workshops and go home with milkweed plants" on which monarch butterflies lay their eggs, Roos said. "Then I get the proud pictures the next year of a monarch." The enthusiasm can be contagious. Ron Ross, a mortgage auditor and caregiver in Charlotte, wanted to find a project that would en- gage his community off Beatties Ford Road. He found it in the pollinator nonprofit groups, she gardens that a half -dozen knew little about pollina- neighbors have tended tors until 2007. since last summer as fore - That's when news broke_ that 30 to 90 percent of domestic honey bee hives were being lost, the vital worker bees are disap- pearing. Losses have mod- erated since, but the cause of colony collapse disorder, as it is called, remains a mystery. Re- searchers suspect a mix of reasons, including in- vasive mites, new diseases and pesticide poisoning. "Our goal is being PC - pollinator conscious - so that when you start to pull out that bottle of Roundup (weed killer), you might pause and think of pollina- tors and say `maybe I don't need that,' " Stiles