According ot Yahoo! News, "The U.S. government is creating a safe place for bees on national wildlife refuges by phasing out the use of genetically modified crops and an agricultural pesticide implicated in the mass die-off of pollinators.

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Wildlife Refuge System manages 150 million acres across the country. By January 2016, the agency will ban the use of neonicotinoids, widely used nerve poisons that a growing number of scientific studies have shown are harmful to bees, birds, mammals, and fish.

"Neonicotinoids, also called neonics, can be sprayed on crops, but most often the seeds are coated with the pesticide so that the poison spreads throughout every part of the plant as it grows, including the pollen and nectar that pollinators like bees and butterflies eat.”

Of note, “Neonicotinoids account for 40 percent of the global pesticide market and are used to treat most corn and soybean crops in the U.S."

"…The nationwide ban, however, goes further as it also prohibits the use of genetically modified seeds to grow crops to feed wildlife.

"A FWS spokesperson declined to comment on why the agency was banning genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in wildlife refuges."

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