Tess Freeman / The Bulletin Henry Kammetler, center, holds up a sign to celebrate his son Cole Kammetler's 7th birthday during the annual Earth Day Parade on Saturday in downtown Bend. Cole was dressed as a penguin and his father and mother, Stephanie Kammetler, left, dressed up as monkeys in the parade of species.

Saturday was Cole Kammetler’s birthday, and according to his father, the 7-year-old from Bend wanted little more than to march in the annual Earth Day Parade.

Cole, dressed as a penguin, joined parents Henry and Stephanie Kammetler in their monkey suits — “Simian-American,” his father countered — in a trip around downtown Bend, accompanied by hundreds of others on stilts, on unicycles and in animal costumes of every variety.

It was an easy birthday wish to satisfy, said Henry Kammetler.

“He said he wanted to plant trees, or recycle, no presents because of all the waste,” he said. “We don’t know where he gets it.”

Organized by The Environmental Center, the parade marked its 26th year Saturday.

Mike Riley, executive director of The Environmental Center, said the costume parade is a fun way of celebrating our connection with the natural world, but the event is also an opportunity to raise the profile of environmentally minded businesses and nonprofits and allow local residents to learn about ways they can make a difference in the community.

The Earth did its part Saturday, providing a brief window of sunshine on an often drizzly and sometimes hailing day for celebrating owls, butterflies, a school of bicycle riders with orange inflatable fish mounted to their helmets, and a large contingent of bees.

“We’re swarming,” said Darren Hansen, director of the Waldorf School of Bend, which along with Base Camp Art Studio organized the group of bees to call attention to the plight of the honeybee.

At a booth set up by the school and the art studio, beekeeper Allen Engle with the Central Oregon Beekeepers Association showed off a glass-walled hive humming with live bees.

Engle said declining bee populations are evident locally. In recent years, about half of his hives fail to survive a year, he said, while commercial beekeepers who ship their bees around to provide pollination services are losing 20 to 30 percent of their hives.

Agriculture in Central Oregon is not as bee dependent as in many other parts of the country, Engle said, but the onion and carrot seed farms of Jefferson County rely on bees to pollinate their crops. He said he’s known many home gardeners who’ve seen their flowers or vegetables take off shortly after they’ve added a beehive, or bees from a neighbor’s hive discovered their garden.

Exactly what is harming bees isn’t fully known, Engle said, but he and others who’ve looked into it suspect it’s a combination of a yet-unknown virus, mites that feed on the bees’ bodies and the overuse of pesticides.

Visiting wild hives around Central Oregon, Engle has often found no bees and no dead bees or just a handful of sluggish survivors.

Where they vanished to remains a mystery.

“Maybe they got beamed up, who am I to say?” he said.

— Reporter: 541-383-0387,

shammers@bendbulletin.com