Pests are organisms that causes damage to human health, recreation, or environmental function. The Park District’s IPM program is an essential component of our ongoing maintenance of healthy ecosystems that benefit plants, wildlife, and the quality of park experience for our visitors. The IPM program manages pests including ticks, invasive plants, and harmful algal blooms.
Most of the Park District’s control activities focus on removing nuisance weeds that limit public access and decrease biological diversity. Controlling noxious weeds prevents fires maintains healthy forests, helps ensure diverse plant communities and protects habitats for the plants and wildlife that live in the parks.
An environmental ethic guides the Park District in all its activities. As a first step, the Park District believes that prevention is the most safe and effective pest management.
The Park District also relies on the following principles when implementing its IPM program:
• Scientific standards
• Weight of evidence
• Best practices
Factors that influence treatment strategies include:
• The level of public health and environmental risk
• Severity of the problem
• Timing for optimal control
• Effectiveness of available methods
• Available resources
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a widely accepted, science-based approach used to control pests while minimizing hazards to human health and the environment.
IPM Control Methods include:
• Cultural controls such as grazing or mulching
• Mechanical control such as mowing or hand pulling weeds
• Biological controls such as using insects to attack weeds
• Chemicals controls such as using herbicides when the pest problem cannot be remedied by other methods.
The Park District’s goal is to manage pests in the most effective and safest manner for our park visitors, employees and natural resources. The principal goals of the Park District’s IPM program are:
• Healthy Forests – Park District wide efforts to reduce risk of catastrophic fire in the wildland and urban interface.
• Public Health – Remediation of pests that pose a threat to public health such as treatments for ticks, E. coli, and harmful algal blooms.
• Ecological Function – Vegetation and pest management to promote and maintain sensitive natural resources and increase biodiversity. This broad goal includes habitat enhancement, ecological restoration projects, and environmental programs.
• Safe and Accessible Recreation – Vegetation management to maintain recreation use, including landscaping, gardens and other recreational uses.
• Fire Safety – Vegetation management around ignition sources, maintaining building perimeters and fire access in areas that are prone to ignition and in fire prone areas. These include trails, roads, barbecues and fire pits, campgrounds, high use picnic areas, parking lots, buildings, and infrastructure perimeters.
The Park District’s Stewardship Department includes a licensed Pest Control Advisor and an Integrated Pest Management Unit. This unit trains District staff to ensure that the most comprehensive approach to IPM is utilized. The Park Operation staff are the “boots on the ground” staff monitoring and evaluating treatments, while restoration contractors are utilized for landscape level control programs.
The Park District’s IPM program works to target pests that threaten healthy forests, public health, and ecological functions. There are many invasive pests that cannot be managed with standard tools such as line-trimming and/or grazing. A few examples of pest problems where chemical controls are used include:
• Poison Oak: Because of public safety concerns, poison oak is not manageable through hand pulling, so the Park District may use chemicals to control poison oak in key areas.
• French Broom: French broom has become a widespread recreational and ecological nuisance that, in the event of fire, provides a fuel ladder threatening the persistence of our oak/bay woodlands and increasing the potential for catastrophic wildfire.
• Yellow starthistle: Yellow starthistle is a state listed noxious weed that if left unmanaged grows into a dense monoculture. This hinders recreational use of trails and excludes native wildflowers and grasses that provide essential ecosystem services.
• Become a weed mapper! With Calflora you can identify and map the extent of invasive weeds as well as native plants. This data helps land managers strategize, co-operate and adaptively manage programs.
• Learn to identify invasive plants. Download the Districts invasive plant guide and mapping instructions.
• Practice good park hygiene – Arrive at parks free from dirt. Clean your boots or bicycle tires. Don’t leave plants and animals in parks. Don’t take plants and animals from parks.
• When treating pests (insects, weeds, rodents, molds, etc.) Consult the extensive data base from the University of California Integrate Pest Management
• Bay Friendly Landscaping can help you save water, use fewer pesticides and provide valuable habitat for birds and pollinators, Check them out at: http://www.acgov.org/sustain/what/greenbuilding/bfl.htm
• To minimize rodents, exclusion and sanitation is the most effective treatment! UC IPM provides many integrated approaches for rodent control. Check out the Hungry Owl Project and encourage natural predators.
The Park District relies on best practices and scientific standards to manage pests, emphasizing mechanical and cultural controls. Most Park District’s management activities are mechanical, including mowing, line-trimming and hand-pulling. The Park District also relies on cultural methods such as grazing and mulching. The Park District uses chemical controls (pesticides and herbicides) in locations where cultural and mechanical methods are not feasible or effective. Learn more about IPM Methodology.