Last week, the Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center hosted a collaborative workshop uniting pollinator experts, biologists, and land managers from across the Southeastern U.S. and U.S. Caribbean to evaluate and rank at-risk native bee species across the region. 

Resource managers rely heavily on standardized species assessments to prioritize their field efforts, yet many native endemic specialist bees, and their host plants, have not been evaluated for their conservation status or threat vulnerability. This workshop directly addressed that gap by gathering expert knowledge to apply NatureServe’s Conservation Status Ranks to native bees. 

The technical team pooled regional datasets and peer-reviewed literature to map shifting distributions, evaluating how stressors like extreme weather events and altered bloom cycles threaten local populations. 

The resulting data will give regional managers an actionable roadmap to protect the Southeast’s bee populations.