The Buffalo Pest Management Board has been awarded the "Excellence in IPM Award" by the New York State Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Program, a partnership between the state and Cornell University. The Buffalo program won for its can-do attitude in seeking and promoting the lowest-risk solutions to the city's pest problems.

David Hahn-Baker, chair of the board, never planned to learn all about rats. But when he joined eight colleagues on the board, most of them volunteers, rat biology was part of the learning curve.

"A rat's job is not to be seen," explains Hahn-Baker. Prevent their access to food and shelter, he says, and they will move on.

An entire neighborhood can manage rats, Hahn-Baker says, by using sensible IPM preventive measures -- including heavy duty, tightly lidded rubber garbage cans that rats can't chew through.

The city of Buffalo has distributed about 150,000 of these cans -- called totes -- to businesses and households. "They really work, forcing rats to seek alternate food sources -- to the chagrin of Buffalo's first-ring suburbs," says Phil Nasca, deputy director of building operations for Buffalo and a former member of the Pest Management Board.

Buffalo's Common Council voted in a pesticide phase-out in 1998. The law permits low-risk sprays, but only when there is no alternative. Buffalo was the nation's second city to adopt such a law. New York City is the most recent convert.

Don Rutz, professor of veterinary entomology at Cornell and director of New York's IPM Program, will present the award Feb. 23 in Buffalo. "This is a proactive, hands-on group," says Rutz. "They're a great model for how communities can approach controversial issues around pesticides."