Photos: In Colombia, illegally felled timber repurposed to help bees | Climate

In northeast Colombia, police guard warehouses stacked excessive with confiscated timber with a noble new future: transformation into properties for bees beleaguered by pesticides and local weather change.

The illegally harvested wooden is utilized in northern Colombia’s Santander division for its “Timber Returns Dwelling” initiative, which has been constructing hives since 2021 to accommodate the little pollinators so essential to human survival.

Thus far, the venture has seen about 200 cubic meters (7,060 cubic ft) of wooden remodeled into 1,000 bee hives, with one other 10,000 deliberate for the subsequent section, in response to the Santander environmental authority.

Beforehand, confiscated timber was was sawdust and donated to municipalities for initiatives, or generally simply left to rot.

Now it’s being repurposed to assist deal with the “extraordinarily significant issue” of doable bee extinction, mentioned biologist German Perilla, director of the Honey Bee Affect Basis.

About three-quarters of crops producing fruits or seeds for human consumption rely on pollination. Nonetheless, the United Nations has warned that 40 p.c of invertebrate pollinators – significantly bees and butterflies – threat world extinction.

“The primary menace is that we are going to run out of timber and there shall be no flowers as a result of, with out flowers, there are not any bees; with out bees, there are not any people, and we’ll run out of meals,” mentioned beekeeper Maria Acevedo, one of many beneficiaries of the venture.

In 2023 alone, she mentioned, she misplaced greater than half of her hives. She blames pesticides used within the close by manufacturing of crops comparable to espresso.