Washington state has become the first US state to develop a statewide strategy to conserve bumble bees, focusing on eight state and federally recognized bumble bee species.

“We collectively saw (those species) as a shared priority and wanted to identify things we could do,” said Taylor Cotten, who manages conservation assessments for the state wildlife department and partnered with the Xerces Society and federal agencies to develop the strategy. 

About 1,200 community scientists worked for three years to map the bumble bees of Washington, Oregon and Idaho, starting in 2018, as part of a collaborative community science effort,  the Pacific Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas.