Days after Maryland state legislators introduced a bill aimed at protecting pollinators by restricting the use of neonicotinoid insecticides in residential areas, a group of representatives of Bayer, Syngenta, CropLife America, Maryland Farm Bureau, and the Maryland Department of Agriculture planned and executed a counter-offensive. Emails obtained by U.S. Right to Know show the strategies they used over the next two and a half years.

The emails are a rare window into the pesticide industry’s playbook for trying to keep a group of controversial pesticides on the American market. The industry group touted pesticide industry efforts to protect pollinators, collaborated closely with the Maryland Department of Agriculture, and tried to recruit a bee expert to testify on their behalf, among other efforts to defeat the bills.

Neonicotinoids, or neonics, are the most widely used insecticides in the world. They are toxic to bees and other pollinators.