Hi Josie, We have pest log stations for our institution located in accessible areas for all employees. This is a binder containing an attached pen, multiple pages of spreadsheet for filling out the necessary information. We include a map printed out with the binder for the reporter to denote location as well. Each station has a drop box for insects collected by staff and it is always a great opportunity to connect and educate about what are incidental visitors in comparison to "pests" getting inside the buildings. I love hearing from staff about a non-pest bug they found and relocated outside or when they are able to identify a pest right away! We have columns that ask: Is the specimen in the drop box? and Was the observation location noted on the map? These are checked biweekly or monthly depending on capacity and then input to our own online pest tracking spreadsheet. The drop box is not useful for rodents, but very helpful with insects.
In addition to my role, we have a contract pest control company that focuses on vertebrate pests and sends us weekly reports via email of their walkthroughs. This allows me to focus mostly on insect monitoring and helps immensely. Echoing others advise here, fostering relationships with the maintenance team, security, and on-site staff can help them feel more comfortable reporting, knowing their observations will be looked at, and creating buy-in. Presenting to individual departments or to all staff annually to introduce yourself, IPM, and the logging stations helps too! You may be doing this all already. I also want to validate your fear of rodents and maintain your boundary of limiting interaction! With these log stations you can ask the maintenance staff and anyone else involved in maintaining the "envelope" of your buildings to report points of access and to focus on contracting/scheduling exclusion i.e more or new door sweeps and gasketing. There are also natural repellents for rodents to spray in high traffic areas, although this requires consistent upkeep and may not be feasible for the staff involved. Best, Katey On Thursday, September 26, 2024 at 5:04:59 PM UTC-7 Josie Sneed-Gilliam wrote: Hello all, The Maintenace team at my institution takes care of the rodent traps across a large complex and they have never logged the activity in the past. We are seeing an uptick in activity as fall arrives and I obviously want to document that and all the mice moving forward. However, our maintenance staff do not have company email access, and they're not used to keeping track of the number or locations of mice that are caught. What's an effective non-digital way that other IPM folks have used for their fellow employees to report or track pest activity? Any thoughts or experiences are appreciated. Thanks. (I want to add that I have a pretty intense fear of rodents, which is why I don't take over the trap checking completely. Also with my currents responsibilities, I don't have as much time as I'd like to dedicate to all aspects of IPM, so having the assistance with the rodent traps helps out a lot) Josie -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MuseumPests" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to pestlist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pestlist/e6d476d4-8a7a-4afa-ac4e-5988431ccc55n%40googlegroups.com.
