Pest management program for structured urban environments

Abstract

The development and evaluation of the pest management program involved many different aspects of urban pest control and urban pest management. The program consisted of individual pest management programs for the primary urban pests in prison environments. Each program involved resource manuals, training programs, monitoring methods, decision-making strategies, and methods of recording and reporting pest levels and control strategies. The programs were designed to be administered by a technician using the resource manuals as a basic guideline. A supervisor position was also created as a source of continuous monitoring of the program’s progress. The evaluation of the overall pest management program concentrated on the program’s effectiveness through; its ability to reduce pest levels, its ability to reduce pesticide use, its ability to reduce the relative toxicity of the pesticide applications, its cost-effectiveness, the attitudes of all people directly affected by the program, and the knowledge of the individuals responsible for administering the program.

The cockroach and house fly pest management programs were evaluated concerning their ability to effectively reduce pest levels. The cockroach program achieved a 68% reduction over the initial German cockroach populations within the first month. By the fourth month, 95% control was achieved and maintained through the program and the entire evaluation period. The house fly program received an average of 79% reduction from the previous year after one month of operations.

The program’s ability to optimize pesticide use and minimize pesticide exposure was demonstrated in a 97% reduction in the actual amount of pesticides used with the pest management program compared to the previous pest control program. In addition to reducing the actual volume of pesticides used, the pest management program also provided a 93 - 99% reduction in relative toxicity compared to the previous program. The relative toxicity of the two programs was determined by factoring the amount of active ingredients applied with the programs and accounting for each pesticide’s toxicity level.

The evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of the program demonstrated an increase of $0.59 per inmate per year in materials costs. However, the pest management program also resulted in a reduction in the amount of time required to treat each of the three prisons by 60% each month. The reduction of time required to treat the prison facilities accounted for an overall 52% reduction in costs.

The analysis of attitudes of the inmates, technicians, supervisors, and administration personnel demonstrated that, overall, all groups of individuals involved with the program preferred the use of the pest management program over the previous program. The general preference of the program resulted in most individuals preferring the program ‘somewhat better’ than the previous program.