IPM doesn't forsake the use of pesticides, but stresses that people make sure there is a problem before they resort to chemical warfare, and that they use the right spray for the job. Different efforts across the watershed are adopting various programs to get that message to everyone from dedicated gardeners to students in the classroom. The Bay Program has a goal of promoting IPM use on 25 percent of all residential acres and 50 percent of all commercial land within the watershed by 2000. The Bug Club, formed in 1997, is one of many efforts working toward that goal. Members of the Bug Club must agree to adopt three or more IPM strategies.
Members get personal visits from master gardeners who discuss landscaping and pesticide use.
Master gardeners are volunteers trained by the Cooperative Extension each year to meet people and offer a range of landscaping and gardening advice. Aveni chairs the Bay Program's Commercial and Residential IPM Workgroup, which is in charge of seeing that the Bay Program's goal is implemented. The goal, Aveni admits, is difficult to measure and attain. It's also overshadowed by the Bay Program's agricultural goal, which seeks to have IPM used on 75 percent of all agricultural land in the watershed by 2000. And, to be sure, homeowner use is probably only a fraction of the more than 13 million pounds of pesticides the Bay Program estimates is used in the basin annually by agriculture.