Pests can cause property damage and pose health risks to people and pets. Pest identification and monitoring help prevent or detect infestations before they become problems.
Natural enemies such as predators, parasites, and pathogens help to control pest populations. Resistant varieties of plants, animals, and materials can also discourage pests. Contact Pest Control Springfield MO now!
Pests are more than just unwelcome visitors to your home. They can cause structural damage and health risks for your family or employees. Rodents can chew through wires and contaminate food and water, while cockroaches and mosquitoes spread diseases like Salmonella, Lyme disease and West Nile virus. These problems can be prevented with early detection and prompt action.
Monitoring is the most important step in Pest Control. It involves checking fields, landscapes, forests and other sites to identify which species are present and how many there are. This information helps determine whether a pest can be tolerated or requires control, what management methods to use and when to apply them.
Eradication is a difficult goal to achieve in outdoor areas, where there are often multiple habitats that can support the same species. However, eradication may be possible in enclosed environments such as homes and offices, where certain pests can’t or won’t be tolerated.
To prevent pests from entering a building, it is important to seal entry points and keep the environment clean. Keeping counters and floors clean, storing food in tightly sealed containers and fixing leaking faucets can all help. Eliminating attractants is also important. Scrap wood and other materials provide hiding places for beetles and termites, while standing water provides breeding grounds for mosquitoes and other insects.
In addition, routine inspections can identify potential pest infestation problems and allow for corrective action before they become severe. This may include sealing gaps, using traps or spraying chemicals. Regular inspections can also provide a basis for evaluating the effectiveness of control measures.
While it is impossible to prevent all pests, there are steps that can be taken to reduce the likelihood of an infestation. For example, removing food and water sources is essential to reducing the risk of rodents, while storing garbage in closed, locked containers is effective for controlling roaches and other insects. Keeping the yard properly mowed and trimming trees can also help prevent pests from reaching buildings, and eliminating weeds and other plants that block sunlight can make it more difficult for them to survive.
Suppression
Pest control is a long-term process that starts with prevention and includes short-term and long-term strategies for reducing pest populations to prevent damage. Control is based on a thorough understanding of the pest’s life cycle and habits, and involves the use of physical, biological, or chemical methods.
The goal is to reduce a pest population to an acceptable level without harming other plants or the environment. This requires monitoring, scouting, and counting pests to determine whether the numbers are growing too high. Threshold-based decision-making means determining the number of pests that homeowners can reasonably tolerate. This estimate is based on scouting, recording pest counts and damage, and knowing the pest’s life cycle (how many generations it produces in a year).
Some factors that influence pest populations indirectly include climate, natural enemies, food and water availability, shelter, and landscape features that restrict or limit pest movement. For example, a pest population may grow rapidly until it runs out of host plants to eat, or until weather conditions prevent the plant from growing well.
Many natural controls – predation, herbivory, parasitism – suppress pests. In addition, some predatory insects and fish, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fungi feed on pests or their eggs and larvae. Pathogens (disease-causing microorganisms) can also kill or debilitate pests. For example, bacillus thuringiensis bacteria produce a toxin that kills caterpillars. It’s important to know what kind of pest you’re dealing with before deciding on a treatment plan, especially for organic pest control.
In addition, barriers such as fences, nets, radiation, or chemicals can be used to alter the environment and control pests. Many people have a knee-jerk reaction when they see bugs, so it’s important to remind customers that the best control is to prevent pest infestations in the first place. This is easier than getting rid of an established population, and will cause less environmental disturbance. Also, tell them to think before they reach for a can of insecticide – would sealing a crack or caulking a window make a difference? Often, these preventative measures will do the trick and avoid toxic chemicals.
Eradication
When a pest infestation is so severe that the pest control techniques used in prevention and suppression are no longer effective, eradication may be necessary. Eradication is not usually a goal in outdoor pest situations, but it can be a realistic goal for enclosed environments such as residences; schools; office buildings; and food processing, manufacturing and storage facilities. In these settings, pests must be eliminated in order to reclaim the environment and restore productivity.
In museums, eradication of pests from sensitive collections may be difficult or impossible. Collections of skins, hair, feathers, bone and dry specimens are particularly susceptible to pest infestation and may require special storage conditions (cold temperatures and humidity levels), as well as rigorous cleaning procedures.
Other vulnerable collections include natural history, anthropology and archaeology specimens as well as cultural artifacts. Museums are often unable to use pesticides because of the potential risk to people, pets and plants. The best way to prevent pest infestation in these settings is to design the space to be as inhospitable to pests as possible. This includes identifying and repairing entrance points, removing harborage sites, implementing physical barriers such as fences and walls, and modifying conditions and behaviors that encourage pest activity.
It is also important to choose the most appropriate pesticide for the situation. Choose the least toxic option, and always follow the label instructions closely. When selecting a pesticide, make sure it is registered for the type of pest you are trying to eliminate. Also, don’t stock up on pesticides — keep a few in reserve and apply them only as needed. Lastly, be sure to dispose of leftover pesticides and pesticide containers properly.
Ultimately, the success of eradication depends on a system that verifies that the pest is actually eradicated. This involves a series of steps, including verification by multiple independent, respected parties that the specific infectious agent no longer exists in nature or in laboratories. Depending on the complexity of the problem, this process can be very time-consuming and expensive.
Integrated Pest Management services combine the best aspects of prevention, suppression and eradication to create a comprehensive pest control program that is cost-effective, environmentally responsible and humane. These techniques are employed by many professional pest control companies, including Orkin, which has more than 400 locations throughout the United States.
IPM
Integrated Pest Management, or IPM, uses prevention and management to reduce the use of hazardous chemical pesticides. Instead of focusing on eliminating or spraying pests, IPM looks at environmental factors that affect the ability of pests to thrive, and makes adjustments to create unfavorable conditions for them. For example, growing a healthy crop that can better resist pest attacks, caulking cracks to keep out rodents, and removing food or water sources can make it difficult for pests to survive and damage crops.
The IPM process begins with education to promote ecologically sound practices that promote plant health and help reduce the risk of pest problems. This can include teaching how to prune correctly, improve soil fertility and drainage, and use water and sunlight efficiently. It can also include training staff in recognizing early signs of plant disease or pest infestation.
Next, inspections and monitoring are done to identify pest problems as they arise. This can include examining symptomatic plants, recording trap data, observing insect activity at the soil surface, and checking for rodents in buildings. Identification is important because pest control methods differ for each species of pest. For example, a pesticide designed to kill ants may not be effective against termites.
Finally, the decision is made whether to take pest control action. This is based on the economic threat and damage caused by the pests to the plants or structures. Elimination of all pests is not usually feasible, but threshold levels can be set so that enhanced control measures are used when populations reach critical levels.
When pesticides are used, they are always applied as needed, following label instructions to avoid overuse and minimize risk to people, pets, wildlife, and the environment. Monitoring continues after treatment to see how effective the control method was and if any changes need to be made. Record keeping is an essential part of IPM, as it helps with education, communication and documentation. It also allows for the continual reevaluation of the effectiveness and risks of pesticides, as well as the benefits of alternative control methods.