IPM Committee Tasks: Developing IPM Plan Components: Monitoring

What is Monitoring?

Monitoring is the regular assessment of the facility for indications of pest and structural problems, as well as feedback from facility inhabitants regarding the pest management program. Information gathered from these assessments is always written down.
Monitoring is the backbone of an IPM program. The purpose of monitoring is to supply recent, accurate information with which you can make appropriate decisions for managing pests in your school. By appropriate we mean informed, intelligent, pest management decisions that “fit” your particular situation. What is appropriate for you will depend on the injury levels you choose to adopt (see Objectives & Thresholds), the management techniques you wish to use, and the results you hope to achieve. This section provides a general overview of how to set up and operate a monitoring program.

More detailed discussions on monitoring techniques for individual pests are provided within the pest fact sheets of the Pest Management Professional section.

To insure that this job will get done, you may need to figure out how monitoring can be included along with routine maintenance activities. Make sure that personnel who are asked to monitor understand what to look for and how to record the information. Have them carry easy-to-use monitoring forms whenever they go out. Data from the form is transferred to a simple computerized spreadsheet after each monitoring session in order to facilitate treatment decisions. If the school is contracting out its pest control services, give the pest control company a copy of this form to use or have them develop their own forms subject to the approval of the school.
Monitoring need not be time consuming. The idea is to match the level of monitoring effort to the importance of the problem. Monitoring can vary from the extremely casual to the statistically strict, depending on the seriousness of the problem. The levels of effort, listed from casual to strict, are:

1. Hearsay or reports from other people’s casual looking 
2. Casual looking with no record keeping
3. Casual looking with written observations 
4. Careful inspection with written observations
5. Regular written observations and quantitative descriptions
6. Quantitative sampling on a regular basis (used for research projects)
7. Statistically valid quantitative samples (used for research projects)

Why Monitor?

A monitoring program helps you become familiar with the workings of the target system. This knowledge allows you to anticipate conditions that can trigger pest problems, and thus prevent them from occurring or catch them before they become serious. Monitoring enables you to make intelligent decisions about treatments.

Monitoring helps determine if treatment is needed.

• Is the pest population getting larger or smaller? And if you are monitoring plants, is the natural enemy population getting larger or smaller? These questions affect whether or not you need to treat, and you can get the answers only by inspecting the problem sites on several different occasions.

• How many pests or how much pest damage can be tolerated? This is also referred to as setting injury and action levels, which is discussed in detail in Chapter 3.

• Even when tolerance for pest presence is at or near zero, as in the case of rats, monitoring will result in early pest detection, reducing the likelihood of unexpected pest outbreaks.

Monitoring helps determine where, when, and what kind of treatments are needed.

• This includes preventive treatments such as pest-proofing and sanitation. Monitoring will tell you where these are most needed.

• It is unnecessary (and expensive) to treat all parts of a building or all plants on the school grounds for a pest when all areas may not be equally infested. Monitoring will pinpoint infestations and problem areas.

• On plants, monitoring will help you time treatments to target the most vulnerable stage of the pest. The vulnerable stage may change depending on the type of treatment used.

Monitoring allows you to evaluate and fine-tune treatments.

Monitoring after a treatment will show you the success or failure of that treatment.

• Did the treatment reduce the number of pests below the level that causes intolerable damage?

• How long did the effect last?

• Did you have to repeat the treatments?

• Were there undesirable side effects?

• Do you need to make adjustments to your treatment plan?