Integrated Pest Management: A Collaborative Approach
Forest pests do not respect property lines. The IPM Collaborative brings together cities, counties, universities, and utilities to share data, resources, and strategies before outbreaks become epidemics.
Kyle D. Peczkowski
Board Certified Master Arborist & Urban Forester
The invasive shot hole borer arrived in Santa Clara County without an invitation and without a map of jurisdictional boundaries. It moved from sycamores in a city park to oaks in a county open space preserve to avocados in a residential backyard. Each land manager had its own budget, its own contractors, and its own protocols.
That fragmentation is why we helped stand up the Integrated Pest Management Collaborative for the South Bay. The idea is simple: pests are a regional problem, so the response should be regional too.
Members share trap data through a common dashboard, coordinate treatment windows to avoid re-infestation across adjacent properties, and pool resources for outreach. When one city finds a new outbreak, everyone else knows within days instead of months.
The collaborative also runs joint training. Arborists from different agencies learn the same identification, sampling, and sanitation standards. That consistency matters when a tree is removed on one side of a property line and left standing on the other.
Pest management will always be local work. But local work is stronger when it is connected. The IPM Collaborative is the connective tissue.