Non-binding Ky. measure would encourage coal companies to help bees with blooming trees

Some Kentucky lawmakers have sent a message to coal companies regarding strip mining: Account for its effects on bees, unless you don't want to. "Coal companies usually plant grasses on mined land -- not the native sourwoods, tulip poplars, goldenrods, asters and other blooming trees and plants that bees need," Roger Alford of The Associated Press reports. Thursday at a meeting of the House Committee on Natural Resources and Environment, Tammy Horn, a bee researcher at Eastern Kentucky University, urged lawmakers to pass legislation encouraging coal companies to plant a variety of nectar- and pollen-producers on mined land.

The committee's response was a non-binding measure "asking coal companies to plant pollen-producing vegetation when they finish digging," Alford writes. Democratic Rep. Fitz Steele, sponsor of the measure, assured fellow lawmakers that it would not require coal companies to comply: "It's totally at their option if they want to do it," he said. Still, Horn saw the measure as a step toward helping to stabilize decreasing bee populations because it "puts state regulatory agencies on notice that reclamation plans aimed at helping bees should be approved," Alford writes. (Read more)