Municipalities across the Eastern Townships, including Sutton, Dunham, and Bedford, are hopping on the "Dandelion Challenge" to help support nature’s pollinators. The Dandelion Challenge encourages citizens to avoid cutting their grass until the end of May to provide a source of nectar for all pollinators, but especially the bees. 

“Since dandelions are the first flowers to come up, that’s the main source of food for them. For them, meaning mostly the bees. I think that’s an important species. As you may know, the bee population is going down tremendously. It’s roughly 60 per cent to 85 per cent less than it was years ago,” said Robert Benoit, mayor for the Town of Sutton. 

Benoit said that the loss of bees, hand in hand with climate change, has a negative impact on the environment and avoiding cutting the grass can lend the bees a helping hand. The Dandelion Challenge will apply to private laws and municipal property, except for sports fields.

“I think everybody recognizes now that we need to take care of bees because of their importance in the food chain,” noted Benoit. “A lot of biologists have proposed not to cut the grass and not cut the dandelions in the month of May so that they can have this resource. There are a lot of towns following in these footsteps.”

He noted that these steps are an important to protecting biodiversity and that it’s as simple as citizens playing their part. 

“At least try to save portions of your land where dandelions can grow so that they can become a source of nectar for the bees and other species that need to have this kind of source,” explained Benoit. 

After consulting a specialist, Benoit learned that bees can travel quite far making it important for everyone to take them into consideration. 

“I’m pretty far away, a couple of kilometres from a bee farm, and she told me that bees can fly kilometres around the area. So, it’s important for me to have part of my lawn available for bees. That’s the benefit; you may be far away from a bee farm, but it’s important because it is not only for the bee farms but also for the wild bees that feed on them (dandelions),” explained Benoit. 

Benoit is encouraging Sutton residents to follow the town’s guidelines and noted that the Dandelion Challenge is one of many steps that the municipality is taking to protect the village’s biodiversity. 

“We are enticing people to follow these guidelines, it will be the first of many. We are going to come up with measures for water consumption. The other measures will be mostly for water consumption and we want to be sure that people are informed about what we are doing,” said Benoit.  

Listen to the interview below: