MuseumPests are back in person!
For the first time since we last got together in 2020 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, we are back! Once again at the Met.
Some of us got the meeting started going to see Adam Osgood’s incredible harmonica skills at his gig. We were all in awe, we had no idea he had this incredible skill.
On Wednesday we had some tours of the Met from Michael Millican, we saw some exciting new rodent traps with an elevator inside them.
Shamefully (?) some of us were very easily distracted by the art in the empty galleries (The Met is closed to the public on Wednesdays), though we did see how improvements have been made in the galleries since we were last here. As a Brit I was quite taken by the most American painting I’ve ever seen!
On Thursday the hard work got started. We had some talks to start the day off from Pascal Querner, who has been exceptionally busy. He told us about impacts of climate change on pest activities and the effects of the covid lockdowns on pest populations in Vienna. Unlike what I saw occur in London, he had an explosion of silverfish captures. Likely due to the museum being dark and free of people. Suzanne Ryder updated us on the Pest Odyssey group activities in the UK. All the groups then got together and started work, picking up where we left off last virtual meeting.
After an afternoon of hard work some of us went to some Chelsea gallery openings, This was an amazing insight into the art scene of new York, with some incredible fashions on display. Some members of the group were more distracted by the environmental monitoring in the gallery than the art though.
On Thursday we had some more talks, Armando Mendez presented on some cool AI work he’s been doing at the Natural History Museum in London and Tom Strang shared his incredible work using anoxia treatments on a huge scale in Japan, a collaboration with Kyoto University.
The frantic typing then got underway as all the groups got back to completing their 2023 aims. There have been some amazing bits of work done, which should really help the IPM community worldwide. Leon Zak informed us that MuseumPests.net had over 2000 unique visitors last month alone, so the reach is spreading far and wide.
Distracted!
The ID group have added heaps of pictures (around 150) for pests that previously had no images, and they have been sorting through the pestlist image submissions for good ones to add to the website. If you have submitted images perhaps yours made the ID pages.
The ID group working hard
I was part of the Monitoring group. We have strategized and outlined the future of the monitoring section with a checkilist we can work through over the next few years. We have updated the bibliography and created things to go up on the website including updating the bibliography, updated resources and created placement scenarios with diagrams and monitor checking strategies to help people new to IPM get started with monitoring. In the image below Jesscia is not present, but she was integral to the new monitoring group strategy document.
The monitoring group working away
The vertebrate group are very excited to have been promoted to the top bar of the website. They have reorganised the vertebrate pages to make them more navigable. They have also devised a strategy for the next few years as they have big plans…… They’re working on developing their resources and doing a H&S review, focussing on the risks associated with live traps. They won’t answer questions on snakes.
The solutions group (below) have been reviewing the literature on the use of inert gases for anoxic protocols, working with a virtual Tom Strang. They are also investigating the relationship between temperature increase and the effectiveness of anoxic treatments. Sadly this photo was taken after Eric and Pascal had left so they aren’t pictured.
The Health and Safety Group were all virtual apart from Lisa Goldberg (above), proving you don’t need to be present to do an incredible amount of work! They have been working on task strategy sheets for H&S, starting with traps. They have created lots of documents to work on and guide them into next year. There are also looking at the regulatory charts, reviews from the community will be needed so watch this space!
The prevention group has been checking for broken links and out of date content. They’ve started working on updating the formatting and tidying up their pages generally.
The Social Media group has come up with a strategy and is doing analytics. Generally videos and reels do better than images and text. You can join the 1.8K followers on Instagram and 1.5K facebook followers. https://www.facebook.com/MuseumPests @Musuempests on Instagram.
the small but effective social media team/ Prevention team
Enjoying the parade
An added perk of our meeting has been that it’s Saint Patrick’s day and we stood and watched the parade as it came to an end near the Met.
We all have had a fabulous time seeing each other for the first time in person in three years, getting so much work done and experiencing the fun of New York!