Today marked our third Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Public Meeting. These meetings are mandated by law in the province of Ontario through the Ontario Cosmetic Pesticide Ban of 2009. The IPM program entails passing an IPM exam, maintaining continuing education credits, weekly pest scouting and the production of an Annual IPM report. Below is the 2013 Annual Report for Pheasant Run Golf Club;
Pheasant Run GC 2013 Annual Report 12-10-2013(2)
Each year we have hosted this meeting before the golf season starts. An advertisement is placed in the newspaper and we hand deliver notices for the meeting to each homeowner living within 100 meters of our property line. Hosting the meeting early allows us to essentially “get the meeting out-of-the-way” so that we can focus on the golf season and most importantly, the golf course itself. For our 2011 meeting, we had 12 guests. For the 2012 meeting, we had one guest. And today we had zero guests:
And yes the information still had to be presented, even to an empty room (outside of a few staff who signed the attendance sheet!!)
The long and the short of these meetings are that they are not going away anytime soon. It is a small price to pay to still have the tools we need to do our jobs. I just wanted to spread the word that interest in the IPM Public Meeting has not increased. And that we in the golf industry should be happy that they haven’t. It shows not only that the public isn’t interested, but, that we are doing what we can to be stewards of the land who are using Best Management Practices.
As for the golf course? Things are slowly melting and progressing. Dates when we will open are still up in the air. But hopefully a week of nice weather this week will provide a much clearer picture.
Andrew Hardy
Superintendent
