By Laura Bliss
CityLab
Oslo has taken a decidedly adorable stand in the battle to save pollinators, with its new “bee highway.” Homeowners, businesses, and local officials have rallied to support the endangered insects by planting local flowering plants in yards, planters, parks, and on rooftops. Some spots are formal constructions, offering beehives or bee “hotels,” while others are simple gardens.
“The idea is to create a route through the city with enough feeding stations for the bumblebees all the way,” one member of the Oslo Garden Society told local press in May. “Enough food will also help the bumblebees withstand man-made environmental stress better.”
There doesn’t seem to be a way of tracking whether the bees in Oslo are indeed using the waystations to enter and exit the city, as the “highway” moniker implies. But the project does tie into an increasingly popular, if not entirely new, approach to protecting larger animals passing through built environments: wildlife crossings. Starting in the 1950s, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and other European countries have built bridges, culverts, and underpasses designed specially for animals so they can safely traverse busy human highways.
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