Proceedings of the Vertebrate Pest Conference

Chemical control is currently the primary driver of "Integrated Pest Management" (IPM) for rodents. This generally provides effective control in the short term, regardless of the rodent species. However, governments are concerned about the use of chemicals, especially when they are striving to provide clean and green food products for their domestic and export markets. In developing countries, the challenge is first to develop a good understanding of the ecology of the pest species and then assess the efficacy of using traditional and new methods of rodent control. This will enable adoption of management actions that are more environmentally sound and sustainable (environmentally and culturally). This approach is termed "Ecologically-Based Rodent Management" (EBRM). How EBRM operates in an operational sense is presented for two rather different geographic regions, research approaches and strategies for management. The first research approach is ecologically-based management of rodent pests in rice fields of Southeast Asia. As an indication of their impact, rodents are the greatest agricultural problem in Indonesia causing annual losses to rice production of 17%. I report on the development of a rodent management project in West Java, Indonesia. The initial phase of the research was developing an understanding of the population ecology and habitat use of the main pest species, the rice-field rat (Rattus argentiventer). These findings have been combined with local knowledge (of rodents and farming systems) to develop an ecologically-based management strategy of the rice-field rat at a village-level. The second research approach is biological control of house mouse populations in Australia. Mouse populations erupt into plague proportions in cereal-growing regions causing substantial economic and social stress to rural communities. We are examining whether mouse populations can be managed with fertility control either by a non-infectious agent delivered in an oral bait, or by infectious viruses as carriers of an infertility agent. Although the focus is often on the biotechnology aspect of this research, it is knowledge of the population ecology of mice and the epidemiology of mouse cytomegalovirus in field populations that will provide the critical context for this management strategy.