Time to call your legislators for pollinators & environmental health ☎️
- Feb 10
- 5 min read
Updated: Feb 23
Through the Colorado Environmental Health Coalition, PPAN is supporting 9 important bills—from pesticides to plastic pollution to wildlife to energy systems. Read on for ways to get involved and more pollinator news! 🐝 📰 😊
Read our February 10th Newsletter below:
Hi there, Colorado ~
During last November's Pollinator Summit, the audience was polled, and only 17% of those present expressed interest in advocacy, but almost 70% were interested in habitat work.
You can't have one without the other, however, and right now you have a chance to connect these two essential pollinator protections right here in Colorado. Non-toxic habitats verdant with native plants are being debated by your legislators this week. Read on to see which bills need your support in order to create healthy habitats for all.
Through the Colorado Environmental Health Coalition, PPAN is supporting 9 important bills—from pesticides to plastic pollution to wildlife to energy systems. Check them out and get involved!
We know first-hand from the sponsors of the bills below that your phone calls and letters absolutely do sway legislators, so please don't think for one second that it's not worth your time to make that call!
Thank you for taking action today!
~ Joyce & the PPAN Team
February 25th Webinar: Inside the Colorado Legislature Pollinator Protection in the 2026 Session
Colorado’s 2026 legislative session is underway. We encourage you to support several important bills that would have lasting impacts on pollinators, wildlife, and native plants. Join PPAN's Joyce Kennedy, Melissa Ordelheide of Siegel Long Public Affairs, Mark Surls of Project Coyote, and Lena Freij of Natural Resources Defense Council on February 25th at 12pm via Zoom. The webinar will feature an overview of the legislative process and the legislative outlook, as well as a closer look at three of PPAN’s Legislative Priorities:
Through direct access to the experts on each of these bills, you'll leave with concrete ways to take action in support of pollinator-friendly policy!
🌼 2026 Native Plants Bill 🐛
A policy every plant person can love 💚! Sponsored by Representative Froelich and Senator Kipp, HB26-1132 carries forth recommendations from the Colorado Native Pollinating Insect Study to increase native plant habitat grown on state lands and help grow the native seed stock and native plant propagation industries throughout Colorado to make more native plants available to everyone for habitat gardens and restoration work. In our fire and flood-prone state, increasing the availability and use of native plant stock is a no-brainer for pollinators, birds, bats, and so many other species.
☎️ Action Alert: Call the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee Members to Support SB26-065 ☎️
Let's be real: it will be a miracle if this bill makes it into law—not because it's a radical idea to use pesticides when they are needed, rather than pre-emptively coating every seed—no. Rather, it's because the pesticide lobby will do everything they possibly can to keep Colorado from setting this common-sense precedent and discovering what our neighbors to the North in Quebec already know: that stopping the use of neonic seed coatings is a win for farmers—both their health and their yields; for pollinators; for waterways; and for wildlife.
The Seed We Need Coalition has already made Colorado history, as the largest coming together of farmers, beekeepers, chefs and distillers, medical professionals, and environmental advocates that we have ever seen focused on a common goal: to restore our ecosystems with agriculturalists and environmentalists working side by side.
The pesticide lobbyists will continue to try to drive a wedge between "ag" and "environmentalists," but we're here to say: no way. We know that we want the same thing: healthy, locally grown food that brings healing to the land and our bodies, not harm.
The "Strengthening Economic and Environmental Decisions" (SEED) Act's first big test is to make it through the CO Senate Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee, which will be no small feat! Now is the time to call every member of the 'Ag Committee' and tell them why you want them to advance SB26-065 (sponsored by Senators Wallace and Kipp and Representatives Brown and Velasco)!
Please call them today ☎️ and email info@seedweneedcolorado.org to join the Coalition!
🦉 2026 'Carnivore Protection' Bill 🦅
Like insecticides that target mosquitoes but kill frogs, dragonflies, and bats in the process, rodenticides kill rodents, but also kill their wild predators, as well as, sometimes, pets and children.
Rodenticides are a broad category of pesticides used to poison rats, mice, gophers, moles, and other rodents. They cause painful illness and death in both the targeted wildlife and animals that eat them, including coyotes, foxes, bobcats, owls, and eagles. If SB26-062 passed, Colorado would join California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, and Washington who have all moved forward with similar legislation to protect children, pets, and wildlife. Please don't use rodenticides, and contact CO legislators in support of SB26-062, sponsored by Senators Cutter and Kipp and Representative Velasco.
🌻 What We're Reading 🌞
➡️ How to Save a Human: Notes from a Purple Martin Colony by Bill Davison of Easy by Nature. "If you bring purple martins to your community, do not think you are signing up to help the birds. You are signing up to let them help you. They will need your housing and your protection, yes, but what they really want is your presence. They are asking you to let the artificial world go dark so you can see what is actually radiant."
➡️ Colorado bill would curb uses of crop seeds coated with harmful pesticides by Shannon Kelleher with The New Lede is a good overview of the Strengthening Economic and Environmental Decisions (SEED) Act; and the New Lede is a go-to publication for pesticide industry reporting.
➡️ Concrete Botany by Joey Santore (Pre-order*) In this groundbreaking examination of plants and their role in the Anthropocene (the age of human disturbance), we see light through the cracks in the concrete and learn that humanity's course correction starts with an understanding of plant ecology.
📆 Upcoming Opportunities to Connect & Learn 📆
February 11 — Come make pollinator-friendly Valentines with pollinator educators and allies The Bee Chicas at Boulder Public Library.
February 12 — Pueblo, Colorado Springs & surrounding areas, join in the inaugural PPAN SoCo Chapter meeting from 4-5pm on Zoom. Register here.
February 14 — Stop by Patagonia Boulder for chocolate, giveaways, and to make Valentines for the Birds & the Bees! You can take your creations home, or we'll send them to Colorado's Ag Committee in support of legislation they are considering to reduce pesticide use.
February 25 — Inside the Colorado Legislature: Pollinator Protection in the 2026 Session. Join us on February 25th at 12pm via Zoom for an overview of the 2026 legislative session and what’s at stake this year for pollinators, wildlife, and native plants.
March 5-7 — Come say hello at the PPAN booth at the Salida AgriSummit and the 2nd Annual Grain Summit in Salida to connect with Chaffee County gardeners and Colorado grain farmers who are restoring both pollinator habitat and heritage grains.
September 19 — Save the date! PPAN's 10th Annual Bumble Bee Bash! 🐝
🐝 Bee The Change - Build the Momentum 🍯
Your care and generosity are what make all of this work possible! Thank you for bringing pollen and nectar back to the hive through your actions, your gardens, and your donations!
Multiply your impact by repping' pollinators on the road! Every license plate gift goes directly into our statewide Habitat Grants fund.
