29 institutions across the country<\/a> and the only one in Connecticut, achieving the \u201cBee Campus\u201d status\u00a0was a project led by UConnPIRG as part of its \u201cSave the Bees\u201d campaign.<\/p>\nAccording to Emily O\u2019Hara ’20, a\u00a0 rising sophomore and bee campaign coordinator for UConnPIRG, the organization and its national branch, U.S. PIRG, have a history of pursuing environmental causes and pollinators were a next logical campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a 40-year track record of victories,\u201d said O\u2019Hara. \u201cWe challenge special interests and fight for the causes students care about through grassroots organizing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bee decline has caught attention globally. The insects play an important economic role as pollinators helping sustain agricultural production for crops such as\u00a0coffee, cocoa, nuts, berries and many other fruits. In the United States, that value reaches billions of dollars annually, according to a 2015 White House report.<\/p>\n
As a designated campus, UConn agreed to pursue seven efforts, including establishing a committee to develop a Campus Pollinator Habitat Plan, offering a workshop or course on a pollinator-related topic and sponsoring service-learning projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cUConn has a low-toxic Integrated Pest Management plan, and we have pollinator-friendly plants on campus. I knew at such a green university, we would have most if not all of the requirements fulfilled,\u201d said O\u2019Hara.<\/p>\n
UConnPIRG had to secured the information for the application from several departments. \u201cThe seven-step application came together fairly smoothly, thanks to UConn’s environmentally friendly track record,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Hara and UConnPIRG then designed two service-learning projects, which will take place sometime in the fall 2017 semester, created a website and committed to annual renewal of the designation. Going forward, UConn\u2019s Office of Environmental Policy will handle the task of coordinating and applying for the designation, with the first renewal deadline being in January 2019, she noted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Designated as a ‘Bee Campus USA,’ in April, UConn pledged to educate and build a community that will aid in the fight to save the bee population, which has seen a decline due to the use of pesticides and rising temperatures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":125546,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1715,2387,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[175],"class_list":["post-126246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-impact","category-sustainability","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-28 05:26:55","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126246"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126374,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126246\/revisions\/126374"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/125546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126246"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=126246"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=126246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}