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 | Senior Scientist with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and Rodent Management expert, Dr Grant Singleton, presenting at the USP Faculty of Science, Technology and Environment (FSTE). |
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The Faculty of Science, Technology and Environment (FSTE) at USP held a seminar on Tuesday 28 May, 2013, where Dr Grant Singleton, a senior scientist with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) conducted a presentation Ecologically-based Rodent Management 15 Years on – A Marriage of Natural and Social Sciences.
Dr Singleton’s presentation aimed to provide a retrospective view of what ecologists and sociologists have achieved over the past 15 years. He also identified countries where promising progress has been made and key ecological and sociological challenges need to be addressed.
He said that rodents are also an important constraint to agricultural production and public health in the Pacific.
He said rodent control has become difficult over the years, and the methods of rodent management need to be relooked at.
“From the 1960s to the mid-1990s the dominant paradigm for rodent control was the widespread use of chemical rodenticides.
In general, farmers were reactive to rodent problems; they acted too late and losses to crops were high,” he said.
Dr Singleton said rodent biologists had to reconsider the continuing reliance on chemical rodenticides because not only were the health and safety of humans being compromised but it was also becoming less effective because rodents were developing resistance to the rodenticides.
He said the rodenticides were also having damaging effects on the species which were not a target for eradication.
Dr Singleton has been the coordinator of the Irrigated Rice Research Consortium (IRRC), which focuses on natural resource management of rice production in the agricultural lowlands, since 2005.
Dr Singleton, has also developed the ecologically-based rodent management (EBRM) strategy in the late 1990s, based on adaptive research conducted to manage eruptions of house mouse populations in Australia and rodent pests in Southeast Asia.
This approach has since been adopted in 27 countries in Asia, Australia, Europe, Africa and the Americas.
Dr Singleton has contributed to over 200 scientific publications and is the lead author on 5 books, and co-author on 2 others. His latest book is “Rodent outbreaks: Ecology and Impacts”.
The seminar presentation preceded a two-day Ecological Based Research workshop at the University.
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