NYSIPM’s Matt Frye Leads Municipal Rodent IPM Working Group
Brown rats (Rattus norvegicus, the Norway rat) represent a persistent challenge for municipalities, where they cause loss of business, structural damage, food contamination and potentially spread pathogens that pose public health risks. To combat rat problems and respond to resident complaints, municipalities perform large-scale control efforts. Unfortunately, these attempts rarely result in successful long-term management, and cities continue to deal with rats.
Despite having common goals and shared challenges for developing and delivering municipal rodent control programs, there has been no network or coalition dedicated to advancing the science and implementation of municipal rodent management. Additionally, there have been only a handful of technical resources intended for this important audience, and subject area experts are similarly rare. Enter the Municipal Rodent IPM Working Group.
Organization and Goals
Facilitated by NYSIPM Community IPM Educator Matt Frye, a nationally recognized rodent expert, the Municipal Rodent IPM Working Group includes members from three countries (U.S., Canada and Albania) and 20 U.S. states, with stakeholders representing 58 organizations, 22 municipalities, 18 academic institutions and including 17 industry and technical experts and one government employee. The goal of the group is to facilitate communication between municipal rodent managers and connect them to experts having practical skills and insights, including pest management industry representatives (manufacturers, consultants, and applicators), and academicians.
Outcomes
Advancing Municipal Rodent Management Strategies
Since its inception, the group has held two, day-long virtual meetings featuring presentations from municipalities with rodent control problems and explored how to measure and define success in municipal rodent IPM, identification of research needs and opportunities and discussion of the Vancouver Rat Project. A special session was also held to address an emerging issue and included discussion on how municipalities should respond operationally when a case of rodent-borne disease is reported.
Communication Enhancements
Armed with insight from the meetings, the group decided to develop a municipal rodent website and a listserv to enhance communication among stakeholders. The website will host the final version of “Current Approaches to Municipal Rodent Management,” a whitepaper drafted by Frye which reviews the status of municipal rodent management in North America and describes approaches municipalities can use to manage rats. The approaches section offers a comprehensive review of available techniques and tools, how they work, how they can be used in municipalities, ideal conditions for use, benefits and drawbacks of the approach, relative costs and additional references for further reading. This document will provide insights to help municipalities decide which tactics are best for their city. The website will also include “A Roadmap for Municipal Rodent Management,” a document providing guidance on how municipal rodent managers, industry representatives and academics can work together to advance the field of municipal rat control. The roadmap provides a clear vision: “Municipalities implement science-based rat management programs that limit environmental, health and economic risks associated with rats and the technique used for their management,” actionable steps to achieve that vision and approaches for success.
An article intended for pest control professionals, “What can PMPs learn from Municipal Rodent Control Programs?,” will also be published in PCT Magazine. The article describes the need for a network that connects municipal rodent managers and the subsequent origin of the Municipal Rodent IPM Working Group and reviews important insights from recent studies on city rats, translating them into lessons that pest professionals can apply to their work in residential or commercial sites.
Cohesive Collaboration and Communication
While the group might not have found a catch-all solution to municipal rodent management, it did create a more cohesive system for collaboration and communication, which just might be the must important tools in any municipality’s rodent control toolkit.
