A Pollinator‑Palooza: How Disney’s Helping Nature’s Tiny Heroes Thrive Around the World

From fluttering butterflies to buzzing bees and more, pollinators play a powerful role in keeping our planet healthy — and at Disney, they’re getting a little extra love this Earth Month.

Around the world, Disney cast members, Imagineers, scientists, and storytellers are coming together to protect pollinators and the habitats they depend on — all part of our Disney Planet Possible commitment to help create a healthier planet for people and wildlife. From long‑term research programs to hands‑on guest experiences (and even honey you can taste), nearly every destination has a pollinator story to tell.

So, let’s take a global tour of how Disney is celebrating and supporting these tiny heroes.

In California’s Coachella Valley, local high school students recently took part in hands-on conservation work to support the native desert ecosystem in Rancho Mirage. 

Through a collaboration between The Living Desert Zoo and Gardens and Cotino, the first Storyliving by Disney residential community, students in the zoo’s Desert Defender Career Exploration Camp created 17 pollinator pods to support local wildlife. The pods, small seed balls made from native plant seeds, clay and compost, were planted at Cotino by the students, linking classroom learning to real-world conservation efforts in their own community. 

Desert Defenders is a community education initiative led by The Living Desert and supported by Storyliving by Disney. The program engages schools and neighborhoods across the Coachella Valley through creative, hands-on projects such as building pollinator gardens and exploring ways to reduce waste and protect desert habitats. 

By supporting programs like these, Disney helps encourage students to learn about conservation and take an active role in protecting the desert environment they call home. 

Over in France, Disneyland Paris has had its very own beehives since 2012. In fact, there are now 40 domestic beehives across the resort, helping reinforce natural pollination and support local biodiversity. Across the resort, nearly five acres of flower-filled meadows also serve as a refuge and food source for pollinating insects. 

They even produce their own honey from an apiary at Davy Crockett Ranch and other locations. These bee yards provide a safe shelter where bees can thrive and reproduce during swarming season — the time when the queen bee and a group of bees leave their nest to form new colonies. 

Sustainability is also at the heart of the program. Only surplus honey is harvested, ensuring the bees still have plenty of food to last all winter long! 

If you haven’t heard, Napa Rose has recently reopened at Disneyland Resort and features exciting selections that highlight seasonal produce and pay homage to California wine country cuisine with global influences. But did you know that the honey used in this restaurant is coming from nearby pollinators? Yes, that’s right — the honey is locally sourced by beekeepers right in the heart of Southern California.   

At Walt Disney World, the Disney Conservation team has led pollinator research and monitoring programs, helping scientists better understand butterfly and bee populations, migration patterns and the health of ecosystems they call home. From adding 14+ acres of wildflower meadow around solar arrays, to creating pollinator gardens with native milkweeds and flowering plants in the parks and resorts, to tagging monarch butterflies to track their movements, the team is always hard at work innovating to move the science forward and save species. And as a founding member of the Florida Butterfly Monitoring Network, Disney Conservation has monitored butterflies in the conservation areas of Walt Disney World for over 20 years and published papers on the results. This long‑term research helps inform conservation strategies that protect pollinators far beyond Disney’s parks, supporting biodiversity and habitats around the world.

Through its leadership of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) Saving Animals from Extinction (SAFE) program for North American monarch butterflies, Disney has also brought together more than 100 AZA institutions and program collaborators across the United States and Canada to engage audiences, increase collaboration, and improve the species’ conservation status in North America.  

The Disney Conservation Fund has supported nonprofit organizations working with communities around the world to protect pollinators — from birds, to bees, to butterflies, and bats. This includes more than a decade of support toward University of Florida’s work to reverse the decline and aid the recovery of 45 at-risk butterfly species in Florida and California. This team’s efforts have engaged more than 40,000 people in conservation education and outreach programs, planted nearly 30,000 wildlife-friendly native plants to help restore important habitats for species, reintroduced more than 47,000 captive-bred butterflies to the wild, and even helped increase the population of critically endangered Schaus’ swallowtail butterflies in Florida from only four individuals in 2012 to more than 1,700 by 2021. 

A recent grant from the Disney Conservation Fund will also support Monarch Joint Venture’s efforts to restore and connect 15 miles of monarch butterfly habitat across important migratory routes in California’s Bay Area and Central Valley over the next two years.

For the last five years, Disney VoluntEARS have also helped support declining monarch butterfly populations by planting and caring for appropriate pollinator-friendly plants for their region, providing more than 7,000 hours of service. As monarch populations have declined in recent decades, especially following the 2025 Los Angeles fires, planting butterfly‑friendly plants at home is an important way to help their populations recover and continue to grow. Their efforts will continue this year, helping grow a brighter future by providing vital nectar resources and host plants to lay their eggs on this spring.

From butterflies to bees and beyond, these are just a few of the ways Disney is helping pollinators thrive. This story is part of our 30-day countdown to Earth Day celebrating the Disney Conservation Fund’s 30th anniversary — follow along at thewaltdisneycompany.com/disney-planet-possible, and don’t forget to stream Secrets of the Bees on National Geographic, with episodes streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.