Water Filtering and Pollination: Bees, Mussels Play Big Role

The author is a Senior at Bellevue East High School. This story is part two of a two-part series on biodiversity published Oct. 30, 2025, and we republish it with their permission. See part one here.

It’s a nice, warm and sunny afternoon. It’s a good day for a sip of lemonade or tea. A tiny insect flies by: a bee.

Bees aren’t only small little creatures with wings and fuzzy bodies. Nor are they just insects that buzz around flowers. They’re one of the main powerhouses of the food that all humans need. 

“Bees pollinate over 400 different types of agricultural product, including food,” Mark Vtriska, Professor of Practice at the School of Natural Resources at University of Nebraska–Lincoln, said. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture writes that one out of three bites of food that is eaten comes from an animal pollinator. Bees specifically help pollinate foods such as blueberries, strawberries, and tomatoes. However, the Florida Museum of Natural History notes that 34.7% of native bee species are at risk of extinction.

“If they happen to go away, then what you’re talking about is we‘re not having food that’s getting pollinated, which then it’s simply not made or it’s deformed, and that makes it really difficult to have enough food,” Vtriska said. 

Food isn’t the only thing that animals assist with. The ability to access clean water depends on them too — and in Nebraska, the scaleshell mussel helps with the job. The Nebraska Park and Games Commission writes that this yellow-green creature plays an important part in its ecosystem. Not only can a single scaleshell mussel filter eight to fifteen gallons of water per day, but they are also considered what’s known as an “indicator species.” Essentially, if these mussels are visible, it’s a telling sign that the water they reside in is good.

“People should care about freshwater mussels way more than most do,” senior Killian O’Lone, who wants to become an ecologist and evolutionary biologist, said. “They feed on microbes that could harm many fish, birds, and mammals. They also provide food to many of those animals as well, so if people want to continue seeing waterfowl, shorebirds, and many more, they should care. Those who like fishing, especially for sport, should also care since mussels benefit fish the most.”

Once found across a large region of the eastern United States, scaleshell mussels are now limited into only 14 isolated populations. They were added to the United States Threatened and Endangered species list over two decades ago.

“It is important,” senior Daniela Evans, a member of Bellevue East’s Green Initiative Club, said. “I mean, if they’ve been endangered for 20 years, you think that we’d do something about it to help conserve them. Big disappointment.” [For more on Green Initiative, read part one of this series.]

There have been efforts made by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission to preserve the populations of scaleshell mussels. These efforts include: creating laws and regulations to protect existing populations, developing an artificial propagation technique to hopefully boost numbers.

“People can help stop the extinction of our local mussels by pushing for agriculture reform,” O’Lone said. “A lot of agriculture practices, such as the use of certain pesticides, like Roundup, and added fertilizers are mostly unnecessary and have replacements or solutions. We also need better environmental protections for our rivers and such.”

Vtriska said that a certain species declining isn’t just bad for resource supply. A species, or multiple, on the decline could be an indicator of other bad news.

“Back in the 60’s, the bald eagle and a lot of other raptors were disappearing and ultimately becoming on the endangered species list,” Vtriska said. “What we found out, the reason why that was the case, was the application of DDT, a pesticide. So, that affected that species, but then we also found out DDT also affects us. When you have a species disappearing, that should be a signal to everybody that something’s not right.”

Many species, like the aforementioned native bee species and the scaleshell mussel, are declining at alarming numbers due to human activity. For example, the scaleshell mussel populations are declining in Nebraska due to habitat loss. This loss is often from activity such as dam construction or pollution, contaminating the freshwater that these mollusks need to live.

Bees are declining at an alarming rate; photo courtesy of David Levinson, Pexels.com

“It’s going to take some policy at higher levels for people to understand that we got to do this,” Vtriska said. “The big bugaboo on this whole deal is just the fact that we have to look more long term rather than short term — a lot of the short term stuff that people focus on has to do with economics, and quite frankly, it comes back to greed.”

Nebraska has over 2900 dams. More than half of them are privately owned. The Nebraska Department of Water, Energy, and Environment notes that five percent of these dams are classified as highly hazardous and another seven percent are classified as significantly hazardous because of their potential to, if fallen, result in serious economic loss and environmental damage. This means that 203 dams in Nebraska are a threat to both humans and wildlife. 

“We need to appeal to different types of people,” Evans said. “Think of it as writing an essay. Using logic, like stats, appealing to people’s emotions by showing the reality of what’s going on, and then establish credibility by showing professional people how to deal with this.”

Fortunately, there are 232 animal-focused nonprofit organizations in Nebraska, and thousands more nationally. These organizations, combined with the federal agency the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, are dedicated to helping preserve and save species for future generations to come.

“I’m old, I’m not going to be around very long,” Vtriska said. “There’s this old saying, ‘the way you look at the Earth and how you should use the Earth is the way you want to leave it to your grandkids, not the way you want it.’ You’re going to have to think about some of the decisions because it’s going to affect you a lot more than it ever is going to affect me.”