Bavaria has announced that it will pass the “save the bees” petition into law after scientists warn that nearly half of all the insect species alarmingly declined in population – a third of which are crucial pollinators.
Rather than putting the petition to a referendum first, Markus Soder, Bavaria’s state premier, announced they would simply put it into law and pass it through the parliament.
“We are taking the text of the referendum word for word,” Soder, who is the leader of the conservative CSU party that governs the state in a coalition majority, said in a statement.
After launching in February, the proposal is now completely underway to seek better protection of the flora and faunas in Bavaria.
According to The Guardian, the proposal will target 20 percent of agricultural land to reach organic farming standards by 2025, before reaching 30 percent by 2030. Bavaria’s green spaces will also be turned into flowering meadows, while rivers and steams will be protected better from pesticides and fertilizers.
Scientists and experts alarmed about the ongoing “mass extinction” that has been happening after they saw the alarming decline in insect population, which will cause a horrifying consequences for the ecosystem: animals that feed on them and the plants that need those insects for pollination.
“Unless we change our way of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades,” Francisco Sanchez-Bayo of the University of Sydney and Kris Wyckhuys of the University of Queensland in Australia said on a study they have recently concluded.
