By Rachel Ocampo, Courier Staff Writer

Photo by: Alvespagar

The population of bees has been dropping drastically over the past several years. There are many reasons as to why the decline of the bee population is occurring, but the use of pesticides is a prime component to this concept.

A few students at James Logan shared their opinion on this topic.

In 2014, environmental groups such as Pesticide Action Network, Center for Food Safety, and Beyond Pesticides challenged California Department of Pesticide Regulation’s (DPR) approval of pesticides which was shown to affect bees. The DPR found evidence that the pesticides were killing the bees but did not take further action to save the them.

The DPR proposed to expand the use of two bee-killing pesticides, “Venom Insecticide” and “Dinotefuran.”

A case was filed against the DPR by EarthJustice which is a non-profit organization that focuses on environmental issues. Lawyers for this organization were able to win this case to block the use of pesticides. This led to the California Court of Appeal to turn against the approval of bee – killing pesticides.

When James Logan students were asked whether the CA Court of Appeal made the right decision to decline the use of bee-killing pesticides, their responses contained the same idea.

James Logan Senior, Jasmine Zamora believes that the “use [of] pesticides will decrease the survival rates of bees that serve an important contribution to the earth’s environment…pollination and honey produce will decrease significantly.”

Another James Logan Senior, Jiayao Xu, agreed with the idea that the Court of Appeal made the correct decision. He believes “that bee-killing pesticides should be banned because a few years back, the population of bees were lacking and now the population is growing and becoming better than before.”

Bees play a huge part in our environment, however their population is now beginning to dwindle.