Abstract
Several studies have now shown at different spatial scale that certain species of the wild bee fauna are in decline in Europe. In response, some European countries and the European commission are implementing action plans to mitigate negative population trends. To evaluate the efficiency of these actions we need an accurate estimation of population. One of the first actions proposed is therefore an ambitious monitoring program, which involves the development of taxonomic recognition tools and training to use them. Several projects started in 2021 and concern the whole of European continent. We will present here the initiatives on taxonomy (ORBIT project) and on capacity building (SPRING project). ORBIT and SRPING are three-years projects commissioned by the General Directorate for Environment of the European Commission. Orbit aims to develop taxonomic resources for facilitating European bee inventory and monitoring. SPRING aims to strengthen the taxonomic capacity in EU Member States, and support preparation for the implementation of the EU Pollinator Monitoring Scheme "EU-PoMS", notably by organizing training sessions for different level of expertise. The trainings aimed at 4 different levels: (i) identifying large pollinator groups, (ii) identifying bees and hoverflies to genus level, (iii) identifying bees or hoverflies to species group level, (iv) identifying bees or hoverflies to species level. Trainings at level (i) were developed at the national scale; levels (ii) and (iii) were covering multiple countries; and level (iv) considered the whole Europe. Moreover, the project created a series of e-learing materials on pollinator identification at different levels, focusing on the needs of people involved on the monitoring. All this material will be open to the public on the online portal 'Pollinator Academy', that will act as a hub to centralise information about already available tools related to pollinator identification (articles, online keys, books, interesting links, other courses, etc.).
