A Little Less Tidy

The strip of grass between the road and the ditch is not where you'd go looking for a wildlife comeback. A new study from the University of Ottawa looked there anyway.

Over two summers, researchers netted and identified 3,773 pollinators — 153 species of bees and flower flies — along 31 rural roadsides outside Ottawa. Some counties mowed twice a year and sprayed weeds only where invasives actually grew. Others mowed four times a season and sprayed broadly.

The low-intensity roadsides held 45 percent more pollinators and 23 percent more species. The study's lead, biologist Jessica Forrest, put the lesson plainly: "You don't need to plant anything new or spend more money to see a benefit. You just need to let the roadside be a little less tidy."

A recent continental assessment found more than a fifth of North America's native pollinators at elevated risk of extinction. Roadsides run to millions of acres across the country — most of them mowed into submission four times a summer. The fix, it turns out, costs less than what's being spent today.

Source: "Roadside pollinator populations and the negative impact of intensive roadside vegetation maintenance," Insect Conservation and Diversity, 2026. DOI: 10.1111/icad.70144. Reported by Phys.org, October 2, 2026.