University of California Cooperative Extension's (UCCE) Dr. Andrew Sutherland puts the “Urban” in the job title San Francisco Bay Area ‘Urban Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Advisor'. Sutherland's city-cool, detective-style approach to IPM has made him a valuable asset not only to Alameda County, but also San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Contra Costa counties as well.
According to Sutherland, IPM can be summed up as: “a decision-making process that helps manage pests below unacceptable levels while minimizing negative impacts on the environment and the community.”
Though traditional IPM advisors work with farm advisors and growers, adding the “urban” into his job title was part of UC's recent strategic push to provide more resources for important urban clientele. California is now considered the most urbanized state in the nation.
“I was the first IPM advisor in the system with “urban” in the title, and when I was hired, people were like: ‘what the heck are you going to do?'” recalled Sutherland.
It turns out: a lot. Sutherland is involved in a number of local, regional, and statewide projects, though his main work may lie in determining which problems need solving.
“In order to serve your clients, you first have to assess their needs, and that's an ongoing process, so I guess I'm still in the needs assessment-heavy part of my program, and I probably will be for years,” commented Sutherland.
Sutherland serves a number of urban pest management professionals- primarily within the structural, industrial, and household pest control industries, who are often under pressure, at the top, from regulators restricting pesticides and pest control methods, and at the bottom, from a customer base seeking reduced-risk services while continuing to demand pest free homes and businesses. The customer base in the Bay Area is especially loud in their demands for “green” or “natural” alternatives to traditional pest control. However, not everyone Sutherland works with is receptive to alternative strategies, and many pest control companies still depend on pesticide-intensive service routes for their livelihoods.
“It's a balancing act for me to serve the mandates of my position (which are to help clients manage pests while minimizing risks to the environment and the community) while also adequately serving my professional client base, showing them that I'm a good guy here to help them,” noted Sutherland, who added, “the tact I've taken is to say, ‘you've got these pressures here, you're going to have to evolve. I'm going to help you evolve.'”
Sutherland is tasked with bridging profitable work for industry professionals with ecologically minded techniques including pest prevention and the use of nonchemical tactics when appropriate. The reactive “spray and pray” service model, as it's known, has been considered cheaper than more dynamic and proactive pest management models which include preventive tactics such as structural exclusion of pests (the use of sealants, barriers, and repairs to help keep pests from invading in the first place). In the long run, however, preventive measures have sometimes been shown to be more cost effective since pests tend to occur less frequently overall. Sutherland points out that beyond perceived economic benefits, regular spray service may be an inherent part of domestic American culture.
“You water your lawn, you play golf, you have the pest control guy come and spray around your house every two months, and that is kind of accepted as part of the culture,” noted Sutherland.
“A lot of the members the pest control industry realize that there are other ways to do things, but they are resisting because it's difficult and because many of their customers still request conventional spray services. Change is scary and difficult and expensive,” he added.
Sutherland believes that a shift away from this mentality may be happening due to increasing public health concerns. That said, Sutherland acknowledges the difficulty in gathering data on long term health effects of pesticide use since chronic impacts require decades of study to detect. The lifespan of pesticides in the marketplace may not be long enough to attain information about long term and chronic health effects.
The potential long term impacts of his work helps Sutherland identify priorities for his outreach and research projects. The main goal of working in Extension, according to Sutherland, is being able to facilitate meaningful changes, as opposed to generating lists of publications, as is sometimes consistent with the goals of traditional academia. Measuring impacts could mean identifying that a particular pesticide active ingredient has decreased in prevalence, reduced risk materials have been adopted, or that surface water contamination levels have decreased. Sutherland hopes to chart a clear change in mutually beneficial business models and practices within California's pest control industry, based on the results and extended messages of his program.
“I'm thinking about how many people read academic publications; did they have changes in behavior, changes in knowledge, did those changes in knowledge lead to changes in the environment or changes in the community?” reflected Sutherland.
One of Sutherland's current research programs focuses on the development of IPM programs for bed bug management within multi-unit low income housing complexes. Sutherland, along with specialists from UC Berkeley and UC Riverside and three collaborating pest control companies, is demonstrating an education and prevention-based IPM program for bed bugs at 3 field sites which have experienced bed bug problems for years and have been unsuccessful using reactive control programs based on tenant complaints. Within the IPM programs, residents are taught how to identify bed bugs and how to prevent introducing them into their homes. After that, the program also seeks to prevent bed bugs by minimizing areas for bed bugs to harbor, and then by using nonchemical tactics (vacuum, steam, non-chemical desiccants) combined with chemical tactics (effective insecticides as liquids, aerosols, and dusts). Efficacy of the program will be determined by considering pre and post bed bug density, but also by cost and man hours.
“This is a long term project that hopes to show that, over time, a preventive and proactive program costs less than putting out fires every month...So that's the goal,” commented Sutherland.
Sutherland's passion for helping his clients is evident in all arenas of his work from research to application. And as the IPM detective that he is, Sutherland traverses bug-covered county borders with his research. One current regional project, evaluating new termite bait station systems, spans six sites in Santa Clara, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties. Bait programs use cylindrical stations that sink down into the soil, containing a matrix of cellulose-based bait that's attractive and palatable to the termites. The pesticide active ingredient, an insect growth regulator, can only leave the bait station within the body of the termite, as compared to traditional application of liquid termiticide which may result in large volumes of insecticides in the soil. It is a more targeted approach in comparison to typical “trench and drench applications” and is yet another case Sherlock Sutherland is investigating.
Last year, Sutherland helped to develop an intensive training program for pest management professionals serving schools and child care centers, helping them to understand California's Healthy Schools Act and to develop IPM programs that protect children from pests as well as from pesticide exposure in the state of California. Over 1,000 pest management professionals have taken the course so far, either in person or online, to learn how to keep kids, still developing detoxifying mechanisms in the body, safe in these child care environments.
“I'm very proud of that project,” commented Sutherland, who is now helping to develop a related toolkit for family child care homes not covered by the Healthy Schools Act.
Sutherland's modus operandi, using his client base as informants, weaves throughout his cases and is what differentiates Cooperative Extension fieldwork from traditional academic studies.
“You have to serve your clients. They tell you what to do. I don't care if you published 20 papers on dragonfly mouth parts... you are not addressing these issues that are prevalent in your clientele,” stated Sutherland, resolutely.
“Perhaps you are putting a brick in the wall of knowledge, but what is the brick for? And why are you building this wall?” questioned Sutherland.
It is this attention to purpose driven, solution based investigation that makes Sutherland a formidable IPM sleuth, and an even stronger community ally.
