About the Western Integrated Pest Management Center

Contents:
Purpose
Funding
Organization
Steering Committee
Information Network Competitive Grants Program

Purpose

The Center's most basic function is to develop and maintain a pest management information network that will contribute to environmentally and economically sound pest management decisions. The network serves two major purposes: to facilitate communication among pest management stakeholders, and to provide these stakeholders with broad access to pest management information.

WIPMC is working to connect a diverse array of people who have an interest in pest management policy and implementation throughout the region. These include pest management users (farmers, nurserymen, park and turf managers, pest control operators, and others), consumer and environmental groups, governmental regulatory agencies, researchers, and educators.

Communication channels will be effective only if all parties can consistently access the same reliable information. Research-based information is essential to our ability to make sound pest management decisions in any context, from a backyard garden to national regulatory offices. WIPMC, working with three other regional Integrated Pest Management Centers and with the support of USDA, is building a comprehensive database that eventually will hold scientifically tested pest management information. This database will be available on the World Wide Web for use by everyone.

Funding

Section 406 of the Agricultural Research, Extension, and Education Reform Act of 1998 authorized funding for the national Integrated Pest Management Centers. As the result of a competitive process, four Integrated Pest Management Centers across the United States were first funded in FY 2000. Management of the WIPMC is through the University of California, Davis.

Organization

The Western Integrated Pest Management Center is designed to maximize collaboration among individuals and groups with diverse perspectives across the west. Broad-based regional participatory leadership assures stakeholder needs are being met. A Steering Committee directs Center staff (the Director and the Associate Director) in managing information flow. Project leaders in each participating state funded by the competitive information network grants program not only develop new information as needed but also extend the communications network to the local level.

Steering Committee

The Steering Committee is the Center's policy-setting body. It must gather input from stakeholders, determine broad policy goals and priorities, and provide direction for timely and effective Center management. The Steering Committee meets several times per year and corresponds by e-mail and telephone regularly. This committee also serves as the grant review panel for competitive subcontracts.

Information Network Competitive Grants Program

The WIPMC uses a competitive grants program to help build and extend the information network. A call for proposals was issued in November 2000. More than 200 groups (universities, agencies, nonprofit organizations, and others) were invited to apply. After proposals were reviewed, eleven projects involving eleven states/territories in the region were funded. In June 2001, another call for proposals was released. Ten states/territories in the region were funded. A call for proposals will be issued in May 2002 for the last year of funding under the initial three-year Center grant. These projects all promise to promote multistate and multi-agency collaboration. Project Leaders will produce commodity-specific pesticide use surveys, crop profiles, pest management strategic plans, and respond to information requests from USDA. These products will be essential in setting research, extension, and regulatory priorities. The Center staff and resources will facilitate communications networks developed through these projects, and many of the people involved in funded projects will be connected to other components of the Center. The state projects interact with stakeholders to identify pest management priorities at the local level and transfer information provided from regional and national sources back to these stakeholders.

(Acknowledgement and thanks go to the NE IPMC for much of the above text.)