Pests are organisms that damage or spoil food, crops, animals, plants, buildings, clothing and other materials. Pest control involves a range of tactics including prevention, suppression and eradication.
Natural forces limit pest populations. These include climate, natural barriers, overwintering sites and the availability of food and water. Regulatory, cultural, biological and mechanical controls also help manage pests. Learn More Here about why professional pest control is essential.
Prevention is the key to successful pest control. It involves proactively protecting your home and business from invasive pests. It includes routine property inspections and prompt use of preventative measures when problems are first noticed. This helps to reduce the need for more drastic and frequent reactive treatments.
Structural prevention is the foundation of this approach, focusing on blocking the entry points that pests use to invade. This might include caulking cracks, sealing openings in walls and foundation, and modifying landscaping to eliminate the shelter and food sources that attract pests. It is also a good idea to install screens on windows and doors, which will help keep out pests while still allowing fresh air to circulate. These screens should be checked and repaired as needed to maintain their effectiveness.
Other preventative measures might include sweeping up debris and eliminating the places where pests hide or lay eggs, such as under sinks or in vents. Draining standing water, fixing leaking pipes, and removing piles of wood or other materials that might be used as nesting places for pests are important too. Regular cleaning of counter tops and floors, especially in kitchens and eating areas, will remove the food particles that attract pests and make it more difficult for them to enter.
Biological, cultural, mechanical, and chemical controls can all be effective in preventing pests from becoming a problem. Biological controls use natural enemies to injure or consume pests in order to manage population sizes. Cultural practices change the environment to make it less attractive to pests or more suitable for desired species. Chemical controls might include natural, organic, or synthetic products that directly impact pest populations or their ability to reproduce.
When these and other preventive measures fail, suppression and eradication might be necessary. Suppression means reducing pest numbers to the point where they are no longer causing unacceptable harm. Eradication is a very rare goal in outdoor pest situations, but it is occasionally attempted with imported pests such as Mediterranean fruit fly and gypsy moth, and some indoor pests like mice and cockroaches.
Suppression
Regulatory control addresses pest problems in environments where they cause severe human health, environmental or economic damage. Eradication is the ultimate goal of this type of management, which involves removing a target population completely from an area or environment. This is the only way to ensure that a pest does not return, so it is generally reserved for situations such as vermin in food establishments or citrus groves.
Preventive measures are economical and environmentally responsible methods that reduce or eliminate conditions that promote pest infestation. These may include frequent cleaning, removing sources of food and water, and ‘pest proofing’ a property. These techniques include installing and repairing screens on windows and doors (ideally with insect-proof mesh), sealing cracks and crevices, keeping garbage cans tightly closed and emptied, and reducing clutter that provides places for pests to hide.
Suppression techniques reduce the numbers of a pest to an acceptable level when prevention has failed. These can include mechanical, physical or chemical controls. Chemicals can kill a pest directly or affect its growth or development, while physical controls include traps and barriers that block entry into a space, for example, screens and rodent baits. Cultural practices, such as crop rotation, plowing, and tillage, deprive pests of their comfortable habitat, while sanitation, manure management, greenhouse and garden maintenance, and irrigation scheduling, all disrupt the environment in which pests live.
Disease suppression is a biological process that uses the natural activities of soil organisms to reduce the populations of plant pathogens or pests. These activities include antibiosis, competition, predation and parasitism.
Scouting is the process of regularly searching for, identifying and assessing the number of pests and the damage they are causing. This information is used to determine an action threshold, which is the point at which a pest population must be reduced by intervention. Continuous pests are those that arc nearly always present and require regular control; sporadic pests are migratory or cyclical and require control on an occasional basis; and potential pests are organisms that do not cause damage under normal conditions, but may become pests under certain circumstances.
Eradication
Eradication is difficult to accomplish and requires an immense commitment of resources. The process involves reducing the number of microbes to the point that it is no longer possible for them to be transmitted from one host to another (Breman and Arita 1980). This is accomplished through surveillance at local, regional, national, and international levels to identify and interrupt transmission before a new cohort of susceptible hosts is created by births or migration. The microbes must also be eliminated from all reservoirs of infection, including human beings and livestock herds, and the entire population of hosts must be eradicated to prevent re-infection.
Eradication techniques include insecticide spraying, biological control, and disease control. Chemical pesticides are the most common way to eliminate a pest, but they must be used carefully. They can be toxic to humans, pets and wildlife. They may also destroy the environment by damaging soil and water. In addition, their effects are often short-lived and may require follow-up applications to maintain control.
Pesticides are most effective when they are applied to targeted areas where the pests can be found. Scouting and monitoring are essential to determine the pests that need to be controlled and to identify their life cycle and damage thresholds. Integrated pest management uses a combination of mechanical, cultural, and biological controls to manage populations of weeds, insects and diseases.
If a chemical pesticide is used over a long period of time, resistance to it will likely develop. When this happens, a different pesticide must be used. Rotating pesticides helps to reduce the development of resistance and to ensure that all available products are being used effectively.
When deciding whether to use eradication techniques, the cost-benefit analysis must take into account the social costs and benefits of a disease. The long-term benefit of eradication is the dividend of reduced future infections and vaccination costs, a value that must be estimated and discounted in terms of present-day money.
The word “eradicate” originally meant to pull up by the roots, a metaphorical application still in evidence today in terms of yanking unwanted weeds out of the ground. It is also the root of words such as radical and radishes.
Treatment
Pests are undesirable organisms such as insects, fungi, nematodes, weeds, rodents, viruses and diseases that damage or degrade natural resources, including food, crops, landscapes, soil, water, timber, livestock, wildlife, human health and quality of life. They may also displace native species and adversely affect ecosystems (EPA, 2014).
Treatment techniques involve attempting to eliminate or destroy the pest. This can be done by killing the pests directly or by preventing them from reproducing. Preventive measures include cleaning, disinfecting, and sealing. These can be done in indoor and outdoor environments. The goal is to minimize the use of chemicals and avoid toxic exposure to humans and pets.
Eliminating the pests’ sources of food, shelter, and water is often effective in controlling them. This can be done by cleaning, storing, and disposing of food properly; removing garbage regularly; and blocking access to water through caulking cracks and crevices. Clutter should be removed to reduce the places where pests breed and hide, such as under sinks and behind appliances. Repairing leaky plumbing is also important.
Monitoring pests helps to determine when control measures are necessary. Monitoring insect, plant, mollusk and vertebrate pests usually is done through trapping or scouting, while monitoring weed and disease pests is generally accomplished by visual inspection. Monitoring can also be accomplished by observing environmental conditions, such as temperature and moisture levels, which can influence pest populations.
There are a wide variety of chemical pest control substances available. Some are designed to kill the pests on contact; others prevent reproduction or interfere with the nervous system. Most are highly toxic and should only be used by trained professionals.
There are several non-chemical methods of pest control, including physical, biological, cultural, and mechanical. These can be applied at any point in the pest control process, but are most effective in combination with prevention and suppression strategies. Physical controls, such as traps and baits, can be very effective in catching pests and keeping them at bay. Other physical controls include using screens and barriers, and changing the environment to make it less favorable for pests. For example, adding shade or altering the amount of light can change the flora in an area and prevent certain plants from being eaten by pests.