Can solar farms become future refuges for bumblebees?

Solar farms could become important refuges for bumblebees in Britain, a new study reveals - though their benefits only go so far.

Lancaster University

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A bumblebee on a solar farm in the UK

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Credit: Dr Hollie Blaydes

Solar farms could become important refuges for bumblebees in Britain, a new study reveals - though their benefits only go so far.

In the first study to investigate the role of solar farms in future biodiversity conservation, a research team, from Lancaster University, the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the University of Reading, set out to discover if the UK’s existing solar farms could support bumblebees in the face of a changing countryside.

They found that solar farm management – wildflower margins verses turf - was the main factor influencing the number of bumblebees within solar farms themselves.

Their new modelling suggests bumblebee numbers within solar farms could more than double (increase by 120%) if solar farms are managed for biodiversity, with wildflower margins providing a rich source of food for the bees. This increase is when compared to solar farms just covered with turf grass.

“Our results indicate that well-managed solar farms could provide refuges to help protect localised bumblebee populations against landscape changes happening beyond the site boundaries,” said Dr Hollie Blaydes, Senior Research Associate at Lancaster University. “We expected to find that solar farms with more resources would support more bees, but we were also interested in how this management interacts with wider land use changes.”

The researchers applied a novel high-resolution modelling technique to predict how Britain’s existing 1,042 solar farms may play a role in supporting bumblebee numbers in the coming decades.

They used and investigated three previously established future visions (based on the Representative Concentration Pathways and Shared Socioeconomic Pathways) of what landscapes in Britain could look like based on ‘sustainable’, ‘middle-of-the-road’ and ‘fossil-fuelled development’ socio-economic scenarios, downscaled from 1km to a highly detailed 10m square resolution.

Across these scenarios, the amount of different habitats in a landscape varies, as does management of these habitats, with consequences for bumblebee foraging and nesting opportunities. All futures see a decrease in agricultural land area surrounding solar farms compared to the present day, driven by factors ranging from changing diets to increased urbanisation.

Dr Blaydes said: “We took existing land use futures maps and downscaled them to a resolution that is more relevant to bumblebees. Then, we added features, such as hedgerows and wildflower patches, which are important landscape elements for bumblebees and combined the maps with a pollinator model. The model predicts how bees use these landscapes based on foraging and nesting resources. This aspect of the work was particularly novel - it is unusual for modelling like this to be done in such detail.”

Their results suggest the bee-boosting effects of the management of solar farms are largely constrained to the solar farms themselves – and have a limited and localised impact across a large wider landscape.

Landscape composition around solar farms were found to have a greater influence on bumblebee densities in the foraging areas surrounding solar farms.

Modelling for a ‘sustainable’ future scenario where more bumblebee food resources and habitat are put back into the landscape would have the most positive impact on bumblebee densities across a wider landscape and including foraging zones around existing solar farms.

Alona Armstrong, Professor in Energy and Environmental Sciences and co-author of the study, said: “While benefits from solar farms for bumblebee densities may be limited to the local scale, our findings help to show that site management plays a role in supporting bumblebee populations. Solar farms could be considered as an emerging tool in conservation to help protect populations of bumblebees into the future.

“If we are going to need additional solar farms to meet our national renewable energy commitments, then strategic siting of solar farms could be considered to connect bumblebee habitats or provide bumblebee resources where they are otherwise limited.”

Dr Blaydes said: “Solar farms can be refuges for bumblebees in the present day and in the future and could play a part in mitigating habitat loss – if managed well. But, solar farms alone will not be able to counteract the effects of all future land use changes on bumblebees and other biodiversity.”

The results of the study, which was funded through researcher grants by the Natural Environment Research Council with support from Low Carbon, are detailed in the paper ‘solar farms as potential future refuges for bumblebees’ which has been published by the journal Global Change Biology’.

Authors of the study include Hollie Blaydes, Duncan Whyatt and Alona Armstrong of Lancaster University; Emma Gardner, Robert Dunford-Brown and John Redhead of the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology; and Simon Potts of the University of Reading.

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Journal

Global Change Biology

DOI

10.1111/gcb.70537 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Solar farms as potential future refuges for bumblebees

Article Publication Date

8-Oct-2025

Burning issue: study finds fire a friend to some bees, a foe to others

Curtin University

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Bees species the Megachile aufrions.

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Credit: Kit Prendergast

New Curtin University research has found the impact of bushfires and prescribed burns on global bee populations is highly varied, with some species benefiting from fire while others face severe risks.

 

The study, led by Adjunct Research Fellow Dr Kit Prendergast from Curtin’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences, examined 148 studies from around the world to understand how fire impacts bees.

 

The review considered the severity, frequency and duration of fires, along with the different characteristics of bees, such as where they nest, their body size, how specialised their diet is and whether they live alone or in groups.

 

Dr Prendergast said while declining pollinator numbers are being increasingly recognised as a major threat to biodiversity and sustainability, little was known until now about how they respond to fires that are becoming more frequent and severe due to climate change and land management practices.

 

“We found that ground-nesting bees and those that feed on many different plants often flourished in the open, sunny conditions that follow a fire. But bees that nest in little pre-made holes in trees or those that rely on just a few plant species for food were far more vulnerable, as fires can destroy their nesting sites and the plants they depend on,” Dr Prendergast said.

 

“Overall, our findings show that bee responses to fire are highly varied, with some species benefiting, while others decline or disappear altogether.

 

“The review highlighted significant research gaps, with most existing studies coming from North America and Europe, rather than fire-prone Southern Hemisphere ecosystems.

 

“Despite Australia being home to a rich diversity of native bees and some of the world’s most fire-affected landscapes, there is a lack of research into how our unique native bees cope with fire.”

 

Study co-author Associate Professor Bill Bateman, also from Curtin’s School of Molecular and Life Sciences, said the findings underscored the importance of tailoring fire management to support biodiversity.

 

“This review shows there is no one-size-fits-all approach, with fire proving to be beneficial for some bees and catastrophic for others,” Associate Professor Bateman said.

 

“To preserve bee diversity, land managers need to think beyond hazard reduction and consider strategies such as leaving unburnt refuges, maintaining habitat connectivity and using a mosaic of burn types across the landscape.

 

“This is especially important in Australia, where our ecosystems and bees have evolved under very different fire regimes compared to the Northern Hemisphere.”

 

The study recommended that fire management plans incorporate measures to support native bee survival and recovery, given their vital role in pollination, food security and ecosystem health.

 

The full study ‘Bees feeling the burn: how fire affects global bee biodiversity’ is published in ‘Biological Reviews’ and can be accessed here: doi: 10.1111/brv.70082

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Journal

Biological Reviews

DOI

10.1111/brv.70082 

Method of Research

Literature review

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Bees feeling the burn: how fire affects global bee biodiversity

Article Publication Date

8-Oct-2025

 

Farmed totoaba could curb poaching

UCSB researchers find that legal markets for farmed fish could relieve pressure on wild populations

University of California - Santa Barbara

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Totoaba poaching continues in the Gulf of California despite a 50-year fishing ban. But farming the fish for export may curb poaching.

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Credit: Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Ambiente (PROFEPA)

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — The trade of totoaba has all the intrigue of a crime thriller. Dollars and drugs change hands as a criminal cartel vies against the government. Communities and endangered species are caught in the crosshairs of a lucrative illicit trade. It may then come as a surprise that the totoaba is a fish.

The totoaba is a large, yet unassuming, species of fish native to the Gulf of California. But its mundane appearance belies incredible value on the black market. “Totoaba swimbladder can sell for up to $80,000 USD per kilogram in Chinese end-markets making it worth more than gold or cocaine,” said marine biologist Julia Lawson, who earned her doctorate from UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. This buoyancy-regulating organ is used for luxury food, expensive gifts and speculative investments in China.

And poaching is thriving despite an international ban on totoaba trade since 1977. Researchers at UCSB and AgroParisTech analyzed market dynamics and the species’ life history to predict what might happen if farmed totoaba were legalized for export. Their results, published in Nature Partner Journals Ocean Sustainability, suggest that a market-based solution, namely aquaculture, may be better suited to curb poaching pressure than a strictly regulatory approach.

A worrying state of affairs

Despite the 50-year trade ban, Mexico exports hundreds of tons of totoaba every year. So Lawson, co-lead author Simon Jean (AgroParisTech) and their colleagues investigated the market and conservation viability of totoaba aquaculture.

There’s nothing new about farming totoaba; there are already operations raising the fish for seafood. “If you went to Mexico City you could get totoaba ceviche,” said Lawson, who was affiliated with UCSB’s Environmental Markets Lab (emLab) during her time at UCSB. However, domestic fishing and international trade are still illegal.

Ironically, the totoaba population appeared stable in the most recent assessment. But the trade in its swimbladder has profoundly affected the region. The Sinaloa Cartel currently has a monopoly on poaching and international trade, and the syndicate’s activities (e.g. extortion, violence, drug trafficking, etc.) have destabilized the area. What's more, entanglement in totoaba nets has driven the vaquita porpoise to the brink of extinction. A survey in 2024 identified only six to eight of these small whales left in the world.

Another concern is the instability of the totoaba fishery itself. When Lawson and her co-authors modeled the current monopoly under different cost structures, fishing efforts showed three distinct equilibria: one that produced a large and stable totoaba population, and two at critically low population levels. “There’s a chance that a small change in the system could push the population toward collapse,” Lawson said.

Unexpectedly good intel

The cartel keeps the trade going by extorting fishing communities into working for them. That said, the job can be prestigious and lucrative for fishermen. So despite the complex relationship between the communities and the cartel, poaching is just a way of life in many fishing villages along the Gulf of California. Because of this, it was relatively straightforward to get information on the fishery, the black market and aquaculture operations.

Several Bren masters students traveled to Mexico to interview fishermen and farmers. The team was able to estimate the operational costs of poaching, like bribes, wages, boat fuel and supplies. They also measured totoaba growth rates in captivity to compare with rates in the wild. This enabled them to estimate the time and money required to grow a fish to a competitive size. Meanwhile, there’s a wealth of data on price per weight from seizures by the Mexican government.

“I was really proud of how rigorous our data are,” Lawson said. “It’s unusual in an illegal trade to have such detailed information.”

Four criteria for success

The team combined farming and fishing costs with economic factors and the biology of the totoaba to create an analytic model of fishery and market. For conservation farming to successfully reduce poaching, it must meet four criteria. Poaching must have a high cost of entry, and farming must be competitive, ideally cheaper. Customers need to view the products as equivalent, and demand must remain relatively the same even after legal trade is opened.

Poaching can be essentially free in some wildlife trades, requiring only a few dozen wire snares. “If it’s free to poach a species, farming is never going to work,” Lawson said. But totoaba fishing has significant costs. Meanwhile, totoaba show high growth rates in captivity, so they are amenable to farming in a way that, say, rhinoceros aren’t.

Farming is currently cheaper than poaching, according to the analysis. And a subsidy program of $6 million per year by the Mexican government could keep the trade of farmed totoaba cheap, preventing a decrease in their wild population, said Jean, an economics professor at AgroParisTech.

But it’s important that customers view swimbladders from wild and farmed fish as equivalent. If they don’t, then legalizing trade in farmed totoaba would simply create a parallel market, rather than add an additional supplier to the existing market. Conventional wisdom holds that consumers prefer wild products. But Jean suspects this likely isn’t the case. To gauge this notion, he hopes to conduct consumer preference surveys in China.

Lawson and Jean are, however, concerned about how this proposal may interact with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). Although there is precedence, the CITES may be reluctant to open the trade of a farmed counterpart to an illegal wild product. If they were to do so, they require the farmed product to be clearly marked. There is wisdom in this practice, as it prevents poachers from passing off ill egal items as farmed. But the authors are concerned this may prevent customers from viewing farmed products as legitimate substitutes for the wild ones.

The success of legal aquaculture also requires demand to remain relatively stable or increase only slightly. Unfortunately, legalizing farmed totoaba swimbladder could induce new demand by reducing prices, increasing availability and decreasing the stigma that surrounds the currently illegal product. According to Lawson and Jean, an increase in demand above 20%, combined with lower substitutability, would cause this proposal to fail. If trade is opened, they recommend that governments finance education campaigns to reduce demand for totoaba swimbladder.

Predicting market response

The authors also investigated how the cartel might respond to legalized totoaba aquaculture. A black market behaves differently than a conventional market. The high costs and risks lead to fewer sellers and buyers. As a result, sellers and buyers have a stronger influence on each other’s behavior, Jean explained. For instance, a perfectly competitive market price is dictated by the preferences of consumers and the costs of producers. But suppliers on a black market can manipulate prices in response to consumer behavior.

Two scenarios emerged from legalizing farmed totoaba. In one case, a price war could break out where the cartel tries to undercut the price of farmed totoaba by flooding the market. In this scenario, the syndicate is willing to accept short-term losses in order to push the competition out of business and regain total marketshare. This would not be good for wild totoaba.

On the other hand, the sellers could accept the new state of affairs and adjust the quantity of goods they sell to match their new, lower marketshare. This keeps prices relatively high, ensuring a healthy profit. The addition of aquaculture means there’s slightly more production than in a monopoly, but a lot less than in a price war. What’s more, poaching decreases. Fortunately, both scenarios shift the system into a single equilibrium, eliminating the instability currently facing the totoaba population under the monopoly.

Either case would also be a blow to the Sinaloa Cartel’s revenue stream. “In the quantity adjustment scenario, the cartel will likely lose $192 million a year,” Jean said. “But in the price war, they would lose $310 million a year.”

That said, it’s difficult to account for the violence, intimidation and coercion the cartel employs. And the syndicate often infiltrates even legal fisheries. So what would happen if they seized control of aquaculture?

“If aquaculture is taken over by the cartel, it produces even better results for totoaba than what we had first anticipated because they can leverage the whole farming operation,” Jean said. The syndicate has much less incentive to pour their resources into costly, illegal poaching if they’re operating a less expensive, legal enterprise.

Lawson and Jean see their results as a strong case for policy reform, but recognize there’s still uncertainty in how their proposal might play out. They maintain that any change would also need a failsafe that could immediately rescind the legal trade of totoaba in case the results go south. “Sometimes, the best way to curb over-harvesting is to adjust existing market mechanisms, rather than depend only on strict governmental and international rules,” Jean said.

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Journal

npj Ocean Sustainability

DOI

10.1038/s44183-025-00143-4 

Article Title

Substantial gains and little downside fromfarming of Totoaba macdonaldi

America’s EV Charging Network Has a Reliability Problem

By ZeroHedge - Oct 07, 2025

• ChargerHelp!’s 2025 report shows only 71% of charging attempts succeed, despite stations reporting 98.7–99% uptime.
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• Software incompatibilities, aging hardware, and fragmented systems are major causes of charging failures.
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• The report urges adoption of the “first-time charge success rate” (FTCSR) as a more accurate measure of EV charging reliability.
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A newly released report by ChargerHelp! shows that while 64% of Americans now live within two miles of an electric vehicle charging station, nearly one-third of charging attempts fail. Despite charging infrastructure showing 98.7% to 99% uptime rates, only 71% of charging attempts actually succeed, according to the 2025 EV Charging Reliability Report.

The report analyzed more than 100,000 sessions across 2,400 chargers. The report argues that instead of focusing on site uptime statistics, the first-time charge success rate (FTCSR) provides a more accurate measure of the driver experience.

“Uptime tells us if a charger is available, but it doesn’t tell us if a driver can actually plug in and get a charge on the first attempt,” said Kameale Terry, CEO of ChargerHelp!, in an interview with FreightWaves. “First-time charge success captures the real driver experience, and by centering on this metric, the industry can close the gap between availability and usability and build the trust needed for mass adoption.”

The complexity of EV charging stems from multiple software systems that must work in harmony, explained Terry, who has nearly a decade of experience in the space.

“Charging stations and electric vehicles are literally computers,” Terry said. “It’s all about these handshakes and how one software understands another software. If you’ve ever been in the software space, then you probably know that sometimes software doesn’t really understand one another.”

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When any of these systems sends out firmware or software updates, compatibility issues can arise. As Terry notes, “Sometimes it may create a bit of a wrinkle in that system … maybe the vehicle itself, the battery management system, doesn’t really understand what the charging station is asking of it.”

These technical barriers create real-world problems for EV operators. In one example, a fleet driver might arrive at a station showing a green “available” indicator, only to find that after plugging in, the station fails to initiate authentication or begins the process but returns to the available screen without completing a charge.

Unlike Tesla’s vertically integrated system, most charging infrastructure involves multiple companies developing separate software components for vehicles, hardware, charge management systems, payment processing and connectors. This fragmentation creates interoperability challenges that directly impact consumers.

The report also identified trends in infrastructure aging. Success rates drop from 85% after the first year at new stations to approximately 70% after three years. This often happens because older hardware cannot be upgraded to newer protocols without significant equipment replacement.

“With older stations, some architecturally inside the unit itself cannot be upgraded to the new protocol,” Terry explained. “You would actually have to deploy a new piece of equipment into that unit in order to update it.”

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This creates an added wrinkle for site owners using legacy infrastructure. While new vehicles are tested with current charging stations before deployment, they aren’t typically tested with older charging infrastructure, creating potential compatibility gaps.

Another challenge is regulatory oversight limitations. Unlike gasoline pumps, which undergo regular inspections by state authorities, EV charging stations face limited regulatory supervision. While weights and measures departments do monitor publicly deployed charging stations, their focus is primarily on ensuring consumers receive the electrons they’re paying for, not overall system reliability.

“Even if the station isn’t functioning at all, you wouldn’t get your sticker. They’re more so making sure that you’re not cheating the consumer,” Terry explained, adding that private fleet charging infrastructure falls outside this regulatory framework entirely.

The report recommends three key industry improvements: adopting FTCSR as a central metric, implementing preventive maintenance programs rather than relying on short-term hardware fixes, and establishing a collaborative industry approach to standardize protocols and share data.

Despite these challenges, Terry remains optimistic about the future. “It’s a solvable problem,” she said. “Even gas cars, switching from the horse and buggy to gasoline cars … was not an easy thing. But somebody figured it out. We got roadways, we got vehicles, and now we’re inside of this new kind of transition.”

By Thomas Wasson of FreightWaves via Zerohedge