Integrated Pest Management
Contents
Statement of Purpose
These links and documents contain information about best practices for integrated pest management relevant to natural history collections.
The Integrated Pest Management Working Group (IPM-WG)
The Integrated Pest Management Working Group (IPM-WG) is a group of collection managers, conservators and other professionals interested in issues surrounding the implementation of integrated pest management in museums and other collection-holding institutions. The mission of the IPM Working Group is to promote and facilitate best practices in pest management for the collections and cultural heritage communities through the development and on-line distribution of training materials and other resources.
A great deal of information about IPM has already been written; the difficulty for the non-specialist lies in accessing these resources. Many are unpublished documents held within institutions; when they are shared they are often widely dispersed (and duplicated) in hard copy or on the Internet. As a result, the IPM-WG recognized that a unified repository for IPM resources would be desirable and began making plans to create an Internet site for this purpose. The result is MuseumPests.net. The site is presents information about all aspects of IPM including:
- Prevention - suggested best practices for IPM including templates and examples of policy and procedure documents
- Monitoring - information on trapping, software for record keeping and reporting
- Identification - fact sheets and images
- Solutions - case studies and fact sheets on remediation options
- Training and education tools
- Bibliographies and links to other online resources
The IPM-WG has also created Pestlist, an IPM list-serve dedicated to sharing information, posting questions and discussing IPM related issues with a broad community.
IPM-WG is an independent group, but maintains close links with SPNHC: many SPNHC members are active in IPM-WG; the Society has provided financial support for the MuseumPests website; and many of the discussions begun at IPM-WG are continued throughout the year at the Special Interest Group meetings that are part of the SPNHC annual conference. Additionally, past IPM related presentations and posters presented at SPNHC meetings are available for viewing on the website.
Links
Consensus Documents
SPNHC Leaflet: Anoxic Microenvironments
