Pests are organisms that damage plants, crops, or structures and can pose a health risk to people or animals. Contact Pest Control Abbotsford, BC, now!
Step 1: Identify the pest. This allows you to learn basic information about the pest, such as its life cycle and biology.
Remove food and water sources. Clutter provides places for pests to hide and breed.
Prevention
Pests don’t just annoy people; they can cause health and property damage, too. Rodents, for instance, can gnaw through wiring and start fires, and cockroaches can spread disease through feces and saliva. They can also destroy furniture or clothes and contaminate food. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to prevent pest infestations.
The first step is to regularly inspect your property and look for signs of pest activity. Droppings, gnaw marks, and nests are all common indicators of pest infestation. You should also pay attention to any unusual sounds or smells.
Maintaining cleanliness and reducing clutter is another important step in prevention. Pests are attracted to crumbs, food scraps, and water sources, so cleaning up these areas and keeping things like trash bins clean will reduce the risk of an infestation. Make sure you take out the garbage on a regular basis and never miss your waste collection day. Lastly, don’t leave food or trash lying around for long periods of time, and always store it in sealed containers.
Sealing any entry points is also essential to preventing pests. Ensure that you’re not leaving any cracks or gaps around your windows and doors, and use caulking to block any openings. Taking the time to regularly check your property for any gaps or cracks can be extremely effective at preventing pests from entering your home.
Another effective method of prevention is IPM, which stands for Integrated Pest Management. This method focuses on long-term prevention of pests and their damage using a combination of techniques such as habitat manipulation, modification of cultural practices, and the use of resistant varieties. Its primary goal is to minimize the use of pesticides, which are only used after monitoring indicates that control is necessary.
Prevention is the best way to deal with a pest problem, but sometimes it’s just not possible to prevent an infestation. In these situations, pesticides can be used to kill the pests and their eggs and to prevent them from re-infesting your property. However, before applying any pesticides, you should consult your local pest control experts for recommendations suitable for your situation.
Suppression
Pests are undesirable organisms, such as insects, bacteria, nematodes, fungi and diseases, vertebrate animals or plants, that damage, devalue, or displace crops, lawns, gardens, trees, shrubs, homes and other structures, or cause harm to people, pets or livestock. They can also change soil health and chemistry, alter the environment and disrupt ecosystems.
The goal of controlling pests is to keep populations below damaging or intolerable levels through a variety of techniques including:
Biological Control
The use of parasitoids, predators, pathogens and other natural enemies to suppress insect and disease pests, weeds and other organisms that threaten crops and landscapes. This approach reduces the use of synthetic chemicals and can be used alone or as part of an IPM program.
Many gardeners, farmers, and landscapers are becoming more concerned with the negative environmental and health risks of chemical pesticides. They are looking for alternatives to replace or reduce the need for these products in their businesses.
Threshold-based decision making relates to monitoring and scouting to determine when action is needed to control pests. Noticing a few wasps around a home, for example, may not warrant a control measure, but seeing them every day and in increasing numbers might.
Using physical barriers like netting or screens to prevent insect pests from getting into fields, greenhouses and houses; planting ‘trap’ crops that attract or kill particular pests, such as zinnias for Japanese beetles; and using mulch to inhibit weed growth are cultural control techniques. Cultural practices also include plowing, crop rotation, and careful cleaning of greenhouse and tillage equipment to deprive pests of comfortable living conditions or movement between sites.
Some of these natural enemies (parasitoid wasps and flies, nematodes, bacterium) attack or kill only one or two pest species, while others (such as the predatory mite Amblysieus swirskii) are effective against multiple species; and some, such as the parasitic fungus Bacillus thuringiensis, act as a “universal” insecticide.
Some biocontrol agents are imported, augmented, or conserved to maintain high populations and keep them available for future control of pests. Others are introduced or released in large numbers to overwhelm pests and quickly achieve control, an approach known as “inundative releases.” In some cases, the introduction of natural enemies is genetically modified to improve their performance.
Eradication
A pest problem can wreak havoc on businesses and individuals by damaging property, creating health risks and lowering productivity. Some pests can also spread disease to people, pets and livestock. For example, rodents can carry and transmit vector-borne diseases like West Nile virus and rabies, as well as cause structural damage.
A comprehensive approach to pest management is required for commercial settings. This requires a team effort and an integrated approach that includes physical, biological and chemical control methods. This type of pest management also addresses environmental controls and monitoring, reducing the need for pesticides.
Commercial pest control methods include fumigation, which can be used to eliminate whole colonies of stored product pests, such as termites and ants, from buildings. It is an effective way to quickly and safely remove pests in areas that are not easily accessible for direct treatments, such as in warehouses or storage facilities.
Another method of eliminating pests is to encourage natural enemies of the pest, such as parasitoids and predators. These insects can help to limit the number of pests by killing them or competing for food with them. Some common parasitoids and predators include nematodes, which are microscopic worms in the soil that can be helpful or harmful, and birds, which can kill flies and other pests by swooping them up off the ground.
In addition to using natural enemies, it is important to provide habitats that are unattractive or undesirable to the pest species. This includes maintaining clean soil, removing debris and trash from the surrounding area and avoiding overcrowding of plants. It is also helpful to minimize the use of pesticides when possible, because they can be toxic to wildlife and people as well.
When pesticides are used, they should be selected wisely and applied according to the label instructions. This is especially important when dealing with beneficial insects, as many pesticides are also toxic to these organisms. It is also important to remember that not all pesticides are created equal, and some may work better on certain species or life cycle stages than others. Finally, when using a pesticide, it is important to know the threshold level of damage that must be reached before treatment is necessary.
IPM
Integrated Pest Management (IPM) uses all available tools — including nonchemical, mechanical and cultural — to control pests. It starts with prevention — eliminating the pests’ access to food, water and shelter — and moves to more intensive treatments if preventative methods aren’t successful. IPM also minimizes the risk of human health and environmental damage from overuse or inappropriate use of chemical pest control products.
Pests attack crops from all directions: rodents chew roots and destroy fruit, nematodes kill plants from the inside out, fungi infest soil, birds eat seeds and berries and spread diseases, and insects sting and bite. NIFA funds research to develop crop protection products that target all these pests and reduce the need for chemical controls.
When modern pesticides were first developed, their widespread use quickly overwhelmed natural predators and other enemies of pests, and overuse caused pest resistance. As a result, scientists began to focus on IPM, an approach that includes preventative non-chemical methods and monitors pest populations.
IPM is based on the principle that it’s better to manage pests than eradicate them. To do this, a pest’s life cycle, biology and behavior must be understood. This information guides decisions about when and how to treat a problem.
An IPM program begins with monitoring and scouting to determine the pests present and their numbers. This helps set action thresholds, levels above which pest control is needed — the point at which economic or aesthetic injury occurs. Thresholds are often determined by comparing the number of pests to the amount of damage they cause or the rate at which they reproduce.
In addition to traditional or synthetic pesticides, IPM programs use biological insect controls such as parasitoids and predators, plant disease organisms and fungi, and mechanical pest controls, such as weed killers, traps and barriers. These natural approaches are a vital part of an IPM program, but they’re often not enough on their own.
By using IPM, producers and homeowners can save money while protecting the environment, public health and the economy. Kids, especially, benefit from IPM in schools where they can be safe from the diseases carried by biting insects and asthma attacks triggered by cockroaches and other critters.