Complete FLAG Integrated Pest Managment Plan

Description

Project Goals â¿¿ Approximately 80% of the Flagstaff Area National Monuments (FLAG) collections which include Sunset Crater Volcano, Walnut Canyon, and Wupatki National Monuments are stored at the privately run Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA) and exhibited in Flagstaff. The FLAG Curator, by means of a unique private-federal Memorandum of Understanding, is located on the MNA grounds. MNA is FLAGâ¿¿s official museum storage repository. Long-term pest monitoring efforts at the Museum of Northern Arizona have uncovered that each of the collection storage and exhibit buildings has a problem with mice entry, placing staff and visitors at risk of hantavirus. Some of the MNA storage building sticky traps show so much evidence of insect biomass that it is as if the traps were placed outdoors. Excessive dermestid beetle larvae, attracted to and eating this biomass, molt barbed hairs into the air which become permanently lodged in human lungs when stirred up by heaters. In addition to serious human health risks, evidence of odd beetles, clothes moths, book lice, and dermestid beetles, all damaging to various aspects of collections, have been found consistently over the years in the storage buildings. Recommended mitigation measures in the form of an IPM Plan are now needed to stop pest entry into the buildings. As a result of this project, the health of FLAG and MNA staff, as well as visitors to the collection and exhibit buildings will benefit. Detect the sources of pest entry into each of the eleven (11) buildings 2) produce a report of findings/IPM plan recommending and prioritizing mitigation measures utilizing an approved NPS IPM plan format, 3) create a long-term IPM monitoring strategy, 4) oversee the mitigation efforts by MNA and NPS maintenance staff to eliminate pest entry problems at MNA and FLAG, 5) train a student in IPM and insect identification, and 6) hold a training session at MNA for local tribal and non-tribal museums on IPM. The collections storage and exhibit buildings to be examined and included in the IPM Plan range in age from 1904 to 2009. The 1904 building (Walnut Canyon Ranger Cabin) has recently been renovated by FLAG. A Historic Furnishings Plan is underway to populate the building with period items that will be incorporated into the FLAG collections. Visitor access cannot be allowed and collections cannot be added to the historic building until pest issues are under control.

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