The City of Medicine Hat's integrated pest management team poses together for a photo. The team does the important work of controlling invasive plant and animal species.--SUBMITTED PHOTO
Integrated Pest Management – it kind of sounds like a process to deal with Lethbridge Hurricanes fans, doesn’t it? But, for the City of Medicine Hat, our integrated pest management (IPM) team performs vital work to reduce the effects of invasive plant and animal species in our community.
The public may only recognize our team when they see us in white spray suits like we’re filming a Breaking Bad spinoff series. It can give people the impression that we only go out and spray everything, everywhere, all the time. However, a lot of crucial work goes into the city’s IPM work. Our crew employs a host of techniques to undertake our IPM plan, while ensuring we adhere to several forms of legislation in the process.
Our IPM crew works approximately seven months of the year. We not only target a variety of invasive plant species and spray the sports fields and parks to maintain the turf, but also take care of the algae and weed growth in some of the ponds in the parks. You can also find us dealing with mosquitoes, wasps in parks, Richardson’s ground squirrels, goldfish in ponds, and other animals in park spaces.
It’s important to target these species as they are invading our native ecosystems and do not have any known predators that keep them from taking over the landscape. In areas where we have reduced or removed invasive species, we’ve noticed native species coming back and flourishing.
Controlling invasive species isn’t just a passion – it’s a requirement. The City of Medicine Hat is mandated under both the Weed Control Act and the Agricultural Pests Act to perform control on plants and animals that are certified as invasive. We also must have certification to mix and apply all pesticides safely.
To properly enact IPM, we employ a five-component plan, with each component tying into the next:
Education and prevention – Implementing preventative strategies to protect and enhance health of land and water.
Early detection and rapid response – New invasive and nuisance species are monitored for and quickly identified when found.
Integrated Control – Implementation of proven control techniques to contain or eradicate.
Reclamation – Implement necessary post-control strategies to help land and water return to their most healthy state.
Evaluation – Evaluate the first four components and identify improvements for cost-efficiency and effectiveness.
If we do spray as an Integrated Control technique – and that’s more often an “if” than a “when” – we target the invasive species when they are actively growing and before they set seed. We spot spray specific invasive species that we are dealing with at the time. We use a specific herbicide depending on the species we are trying to eliminate. Different species call for a different herbicide, and not all invasive species get sprayed.
Some areas we go to have environmental factors, such as being near a body of water, that make it impossible to spray there. We commonly perform mechanical control – a fancy term for hand-picking – when there is no herbicide listed to control a plant.
We also employ biological control techniques. Remember the goats that were in Police Point Park? That was a form of biological control to reduce the amount of a noxious invasive plant species called Leafy Spurge.
We’re also undertaking another biological control technique this month in Police Point Park.
Parks and recreation will be releasing flea beetles into the park that are proven to target Leafy Spurge. We hope they enjoy an all-you-can-eat invasive species buffet.
But, more information on that initiative, and five of the many noxious invasive species we target, will be unveiled as an “Invasive Weed of the Week” feature in our Neat to Know newsletter – stay tuned!
So, the next time you see us out in those white spray suits, and hopefully our standard work clothes, you can take comfort knowing the proactive measures we’ve taken into consideration to ensure the health and beauty of our amazing parks spaces.
Patricia Dirk is the integrated pest management foreperson for the City of Medicine Hat
