Title
Land Management Plan Revision
Body
As Madison Parks continues to focus on environmental sustainability and resilience through native habitat restoration, there has been an increased need for staff to apply pesticides as a control method for invasive species. This is a strategy that follows the Parks Integrated Pest Management plan, and efficiently reduces the number of invasive plants in areas that are being restored to natural habitat, giving the native plant species a chance to become established and thrive.
Parks has numerous staff that are State certified to apply pesticides, ensuring that the application is done in a safe and effective manner. As Parks expands the natural areas it is managing, the State Certified staff alone are not sufficient to keep up with the workload. Additional natural habitat acreage would be able to be managed if non-certified staff or volunteers had the ability to apply pesticides under the guidance and supervision of certified applicators. This change would align the Parks Land Management Plan with the City of Madison’s Pesticide Policy, which allows non-certified persons to apply pesticides under the supervision of certified applicators.