POLLINATOR PROTECTION LICENSE PLATE

State’s first-ever ‘pollinator protection’ license plate now available

In Santa Fe in February 2019, New Mexico State Rep. Nathan Small, D-Doña Ana, looks over a bill with students from Monte Vista Elementary School they helped draft last year that was introduced in both the New Mexico House of Representatives and Senate to protect pollinators like birds, bats and bees. Students shown in the photo are Damian Avilar, Emmery Whiteaker, Ryan Danner, Abel Sanchez are Brayden Alison.

Photos courtesy of Sara Van Note, Wild Friends

A Monte Vista Elementary School student studies a flower.

Bulletin file photo by Mike Cook

Posted Friday, May 1, 2020 2:00 am

By Mike Cook

New Mexico’s first-ever pollinator protection license plate is now available through the state Motor Vehicle Department (MVD), Wild Friends, an Albuquerque-based civics education program said in an April 1 news release. The plate came about with the help of some Las Cruces elementary school students.

Proceeds from sales of the license plate will fund pollinator-protection activities by the New Mexico Department of Transportation (NMDOT), including increasing habitat by seeding roadsides with native plants and creating educational gardens and reducing mowing and the spraying of herbicides, the news release said.

The license plate features artwork by Jazlyn Smith, a sixth-grader at Albuquerque Sign Language Academy. Jazlyn, a lifelong artist, illustrated a blanket flower and green sweat bee to portray the relationship between native flowers and pollinators.

“I think the license plate will help people understand that it’s important to try to protect plants and pollinators in any way we can,” Jazlyn said.

Jazlyn’s art was chosen from entries submitted by Wild Friends students from around New Mexico by a panel of judges that included a bee scientist and a botanist, the news release said. Wild Friends, which is based at the UNM School of Law Institute of Public Law, is for students in grades four-12.

Fifth graders from Monte Vista Elementary School in Las Cruces were among more than 400 students from 12 schools across New Mexico who visited Santa Fe during the 2019 legislative session to promote the bill that created the pollinator license plate.

Wild Friends Director Sue George and educator Sara Van Note and visited Monte Vista Elementary in September 2018 to lead students in a study of the different parts of a flower and the insects and animals that pollinate them.

The license plate costs $25, with a $15 annual renewal free. Plates may be purchased online at mvd.newmexico.gov.

For more information, contact Sue George at 505-277-5089 and Sgeorge2@unm.edu. Visit

http://wildfriends.unm.edu.

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