CONSERVATION

WHY DO POLLINATORS MATTER?

Every blend at Four Stages tea is named after our pollinator friend the butterfly. The butterfly is a symbol of hope and transformation. Sadly, our pollinator friends need our help and I have hope we can do this. Pollinators are essential to our environment. They contribute to the reproduction of over 85% of the world’s flowering plants (the medicinal herbs and the tea in your blends), including more than two-thirds of the world’s crop species. Fruits and seeds we have as a result of insect pollination provides food for birds and mammals. And the monarch butterfly, which is sadly in trouble and now protected under the Endangered Species Act, has one of the worlds most spectacular insect migrations, making a 3,000 mile round trip journey, flying south to a handful of fir forests in the Transvolcanic Mountains of Mexico, where the temperature and humidity are just right for them to cluster together and survive the winter. Why are they so much at risk? Many things, including destruction of habitat, loss of native host plants, use of pesticides and climate change.