Thanks to a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity, NRDC, and Friends of Minnesota Scientific and Natural Areas, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service just proposed to protect 1.6 million acres of critical habitat for rusty patched bumblebees.

Rusty patched bumblebees are social pollinators living in colonies of up to 1,000 workers. Every fall the workers die and mated queens head underground to hibernate, emerging in spring to start new colonies with eggs fertilized by sperm stored in their bodies.

Although the species once thrived across the upper Midwest and Northeast, these fuzzy flyers have declined dramatically since the 1990s due to habitat loss, pesticides, and more.

After the Service made strenuous efforts to deny them critical habitat — and after our legal victory — the agency has now proposed protecting habitat in 33 counties in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, mostly on private lands in the urban areas where agricultural pesticides haven’t wiped them out.

The final critical habitat decision will rest with the Trump administration, so we’ll keep fighting to ensure that rusty patched bumblebees get the protections they need to dodge extinction.