Wise Words from Someone who was there.
The following summary was prepared for introductory remarks at the 2013 Ecofarm Conference held annually at the State of CA’s Asilomar Conference Center. There is a tape of the interview conducted by Amigo Bob Cantisano.
Bill Olkowski is an ecological innovator and pioneer in biological control and integrated pest management (IPM). He helped found the first 3 recycling centers in the U.S., the Berkeley Ecology Center (under Ray Ball), ran a first of its kind Creek Clean Up Project (Cordonices Creek, Berkeley, CA) , and with his wife and partner Helga (1931-2012), the Integral Urban House (considered one of the best houses of the 21st, century by Architecture Magazine), the nonprofit Bio-Integral Resource Center (BIRC), which was a membership organization independently producing two Internationally distributed journals, one for professionals, and the other for the general public. In addition, along with their passion for small scale food raising at their own home, they designed and ran 2 public teaching gardens and a small organic teaching farm.
Four years of work on processing tomatoes (ketchup, salsa) in the Sacramento Valley culminated in a pilot program, called Reference Field Monitoring which showed how to reduce pesticide use by developing an appropriate sampling system for the late season crop. This was implemented in this difficult and highly sprayed industrial crop on 12 advanced farms, totally well over 5,000 acres:
For over 6 years they team taught food raising using a teaching garden on University land, in downtown Berkeley, with a curriculum they designed, along with Plant Pathologist Bob Robby, and two soil scientists Vlamos and Williams. They worked after leaving UC, Berkeley, Division of Biological Control with the John Muir Institute (JMI), under Max and Julie Linn who stewarded them into their own Center for Applied Ecology (CIAS). They left UC, but continued their work with city governments demonstrating least toxic pest control programs for city trees with JMI. Later, after setting up their own non-profit called the BioIntegral Resource Center (“BIRC”), they published The IPM Practitioner (10 issues/yr and Common Sense Pest Control Quarterly (4x/yr with a small cadre of helpers for over 20 years before turning it over to its present managing editor, Bill Quarles, who has continued the publications.
The couple authored many publications including the seminal 740 page reference /text “Common Sense Pest Control, teaching thousands of people how to manage pests without poisons. They and colleagues coauthored 4 books, some book chapters, numerous magazine articles (Horticulture and Fine Gardening, and others), manuals and hundreds of articles, book reviews, and fliers for the public on Least Toxic Pest Control. Their classic work, Common Sense Pest Control, is a 740 page compendium written for the general public concerned with managing various residential and urban pests, e.g., cockroaches, termites, garden pests of all sorts, especially aphids, and others. They were joined in these efforts by their close friend, colleague and fellow author, landscape architect Sheila Daar, who was also the Director of the Institute from which they founded and worked.
The couple also innovated in creating a number of non-profit organizations including Antioch College West in San Francisco, an organic farm based school in the Sacramento Valley, and designed and operated the farm and 4 urban gardens in the San Francisco Bay Area at different times.
They were advocating over 40 years ago for urban gardens as a partial solution to the lack of pesticide free foods and went further to design and operate an organic farm school for disadvantaged young women. The farm specialized in exploring how animals could be integrated into a 60 ac farm in the foothills of the Sacramento Valley for food, fiber, and weed control. This farm was based on fertilizers made from their own aerobic composting systems created with their farm wastes from a small 800 chicken operation, producing about 100 dozen eggs per week and over 40 boxes of produce sold as part of a CSA, Community Supported Agricultural system. They were also were advocates of small scale “farmets” (coining a term) as part of boundary green belts around and within Urban areas.
His wife, Helga (4.27.12) and he were regular speakers at the Ecofarm conference right from its start years ago. Helga and Bill team, sometimes called BillGa taught for most of their 42 years together. They formed a scientific writing, and teaching team lecturing across the US, with visits to Canada, China, and Europe (Italy and Berlin). They also ran and personally searched for natural enemies in different parts of the US for importation to California. They stopped active work on least toxic pest control in 1998 to help care for their principle supporters, Helga’s parents, Tosia and Dave Martin who died in 1996 and 1998, respectfully.
Afterward, they travelled and lived for 8 years in an RV going from the North coast, Mendocino Area, to the Southwest Desert Parks: Anza Borrego Desert State Park, Mojave preserve, Tucson Mt Park and others. They travelled in a giant circle, with Bill painting, and Helga identifying plants and animals.
Bill Olkowski, “Doc” to his closest friends, pioneered in designing and piloting biologically based pest control programs for many different types of public agencies, 6 local cities in the San Francisco bay Area, to the state government on contracts with State Department of Water Resources (CA DWR extending their hands-on management system for weeds, and rodents (ground squirrels)), and on Processing Tomatoes, funded by the State Department of Pesticide Regulation (CA-DPR), and a consortium of funding agencies and foundations headed by the Mott Foundation. He worked in pioneering IPM programs for school districts, residential homes, private and public gardens, The San Francisco zoo, levees run by the State Department of Water (DWR), state and many federal parks, and a private pest control company. Many of the hundreds of pest control program designs are documented in the classic book on the urban area: Common Sense Pest Control. For others and details see the web site: www.WHO1615.com (also contains copies of paintings produced over 40 years).
The IPM program designed with DWR after 4 years of support, at about $70K/year, demonstrated how to manage ground squirrel populations using smoke bombs at strategic times of the year, reduced burning of levees, plantings of alternative vegetation, use of aerial photographs for squirrel density detection (using holes as indicators of activity). Using this type of aerial derived data allows for virtual continuous monitoring of squirrel numbers and densities and ways to monitor for long term studies, say over a 15 year period.
The program elements we demonstrated for altering the road treatment system, which previously was treated every year, was reduced by over 87%. This alone could greatly reduce the amount of herbicide on the 30,000 of miles of the Water Project overall.
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