Pests

What the blazes is IPM?

Integrated Pest Management uses a variety of approaches to tackle unwanted pathogens and pests - so it includes prevention, not just poison. It leverages understanding of the pest to best effect and reduce or eliminate unnecessary toxicity, and it weaponizes health in the fight against illness, stress, infestations and infections. You heard me, WEAPONIZE HEALTH.

Integrated Pest Management is among those subjects that directly impacts the quality of the air, soil, water, habitat, and edibility and safety of everything all the way down to the lawns we play on and the foods we grow at every scale.

There are presently two (I’m told nationally recognized) guidelines published for free by the city of San Francisco Department of the Environment. I’m deeply proud to have served as a member of the working group for the landscape one. I was honored to be included in brainstorming sessions with IPM experts and scientists from all over the country, speaking from a landscape architect’s perspective because it is focused on design. I understand there are plans to generate more materials, so stay tuned. Also, the landscape one is a living document / database (but printable if you are the book type), so if there’s something you would suggest, email them and it may be considered.

San Francisco’s Department of the Environment also provides a wealth of carefully assembled and thoughtful content on the website in the above button. There are IPM guidelines you could use as a starting kit for your own, lists of pesticides with reduced risks, protocols for screening pesticides, and tons of other useful things. How cool is it that they just post this publicly and we can all benefit from their hard work!?

The University of California’s Agriculture and Natural Resources IPM resources are second to none. For those of us in California (and if you have another resource for another part of the country, send it) can look up just about anything in here from plant pathogens to rodents and get solid advice on how to understand and treat or interrupt an unwanted invasion.