The Elk Root Conservation Farm Society’s Pollinator Highway Project aimed to address the issue of declining native bee forage due to summer drought and wildfires by restoring disturbed landscapes with flowering vegetation. They restored a 300-metre stretch of highway and established six pollinator plots, beginning with the removal of invasive plant species. They employed solarization, a technique that involves covering invasive plants with UV stable clear plastic to raise the soil and ambient temperature under the recyclable plastic to create an inhospitable environment to eradicate invasive plants and seeds, which proved effective on four of the plots. The other two plots, which did not receive sufficient sun exposure, were treated with sheet mulching—an approach that uses layers of natural biodegradable materials to smother unwanted plants.
After removing invasive species, they implemented over 10 soil improvement techniques, including mulching, leaf litter, and mycorrhizae introduction—a fungus that forms a network within the soil to help plants access nutrients. To ensure the species planted were truly native to the Kootenay environment, the Elk Root Conservation Farm Society used local ecotype species propagated from their native plant nursery and seed library collection. Within the six pollinator plots, they introduced 18 native species, including 233 transplants from their nursery and 900 individual seeds.
In addition to providing food sources and nesting habitats, pollinator highways encourage the movement of bee populations by connecting fragmented habitats. Through Elk Root Conservation Farm Society’s Inclusionary Education Program, they shared information about the project and provided tours to the community. This promotes repopulation of lost habitats, increased pollination services and genetic diversity. The project resulted in increased bee populations and will serve as a model to support similar projects province-wide.
“The Bee BC Program is amazZzing! And we cannot say enough about the long term impacts this funding will have into the future for increasing bee populations in the Province of BC, and how simple and straightforward it was to work with IAF as the administrator of this funding from the Province of BC, from start to finish. Thank you IAF and the Bee BC Program!”
