Building a community to monitor British Columbia's bumble bee population trends

There are approximately 37-39 bumble bee species in British Columbia, and most are wide-ranging and live in a variety of habitats across the vast provincial landscape. Five of these species have been assessed nationally at risk by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) and at least three additional species are potentially at risk. Data on bumble bee species population trends is lacking, making it difficult to monitor trends and assess a species conservation status. This presentation will be a summary of a pilot project that aims to establish long term (> 10 years) bumble bee monitoring routes throughout the province, and concurrently build a community of trained volunteers who, once or twice within the summer months, would survey one or two of these routes within the areas they live and work. Survey routes include some of the same routes monitored as part of the North American Breeding Bird Survey program, as well as new routes; and routes travel through all the provinces ecozones. Ultimately, the data collected over the ten-year assessment time-frame will be used to determine long-term trends in bumble bee distribution and abundance and update conservation status assessments and range maps for the province's bumble bees. Although only in the second year of the pilot (the project started in 2021), challenges and successes to date will be briefly summarized.