Pest control manages unwanted organisms that damage or spoil crops, property, or animals. It can be achieved by exclusion, repulsion, physical removal, or chemical treatment.
Physical methods include cleaning up food sources, eliminating hiding places, keeping garbage cans tightly closed, repairing cracks in walls or foundations, and trimming bushes. Contact Bakersfield Pest Control now!
The first step in controlling pests is to accurately identify them. This includes knowing what they eat, their environment, how they reproduce, and other key biological information. This helps in determining whether the pest can be tolerated or needs to be controlled, and also in planning control tactics.
Field identification is the foundation of integrated pest management (IPM) programs. IPM involves using many different tactics in a planned way to reduce pests and their damage to an acceptable level without using harmful chemicals. This requires monitoring the pests to determine how they are affecting the crop, landscape, or other organisms and to select the most effective controls. It is also important to know what to look for when scouting the field or landscape for pests, and to be able to distinguish between similar species.
In households, proper pest identification is especially crucial because the health of people and the protection of property are at stake. For example, cockroaches and mice not only damage household items, they can cause asthma attacks in susceptible individuals and leave contaminated droppings behind. They can also affect indoor air quality and trigger allergic reactions in sensitive individuals, such as children and the elderly.
Properly identifying pests can also help prevent them from spreading to new areas or damaging crops. It is important to note how the pest gains access to a house, such as through gaps or cracks, and to seal them. This can prevent rodents and other pests from bringing their eggs into a home and becoming an infestation problem. It is also a good idea to store firewood at least 20 feet away from the house, and to keep shrubbery well trimmed so that pests cannot hide under the brush or near the house.
In cases where the pest is not identified correctly, it may be necessary to seek expert advice. This can involve sending samples of the pest to a specialized laboratory for identification. Alternatively, a professional pest control company can often make the diagnosis on site, depending on the type of pest and the area involved.
Prevention
Prevention is an essential component of pest control. It involves avoiding conditions that favor pest activity, such as eliminating alternate hosts or sites for disease organisms, maintaining good field sanitation practices, and using proper water management techniques. Preventive measures are usually much less costly than control.
Preventive pest management is a team effort between building and facility owners, residents and staff. Everyone needs to be on board to prevent pests from entering or nesting in the facility, including reporting maintenance problems to building managers, properly storing food supplies and other materials that attract pests, and keeping clogged gutters, drainpipes and other openings to the outside free of debris.
Pests such as rats and mice carry pathogens that threaten human health, and they can cause structural damage that lowers the value of homes. In addition, pests contaminate food and make asthma and allergies worse. Pest control technicians can help protect your health, home, and property by identifying and addressing pest issues.
While prevention is generally a goal of IPM, it may not always be possible or practical. Continuous pests, such as weeds and certain plant diseases, are almost never preventable, but sporadic pests or potential pests can sometimes be prevented. This is because these pests usually only appear under specific environmental conditions and can be controlled by altering those conditions.
When a pest problem is found, it is often necessary to take immediate action. This typically means applying pesticides or other chemicals to kill or repel the pests, and it may also include creating physical barriers or removing sources of food, water and shelter. Some types of pests, such as flies and mosquitoes, are best controlled by regular use of repellants that mimic spices or predator scents. Other pests, such as rodents and insects, can be controlled by traps, screens, fences, radiation and electricity. Sometimes introducing natural enemies of the pest, such as parasites or predators, can be more effective than chemical controls.
Suppression
Pests can be a nuisance, like rats chewing on wires in your attic. Or they may pose health threats, like ants crawling on food in your kitchen or wasps and hornets attacking people. They can also damage property, like crows pecking at your windows or mice chewing through wood. Finally, pests can carry disease-causing pathogens and allergens, like salmonella, hantavirus, leptospirosis and bee venom. Pest control methods can reduce or eliminate these problems.
The goal of pest control is to prevent a pest population from building up to levels that cause unacceptable harm, and then keep it at a low level through monitoring, prevention and suppression. Monitoring involves checking a field, landscape, garden, or forest to find out whether a pest is present and how many there are. This information can help determine the best management strategy.
Preventing pests involves removing their food, water and shelter. In homes, this includes storing food in sealed containers and removing garbage regularly. It also means preventing pests from getting into the house by sealing cracks and crevices, caulking holes, and fixing leaky plumbing. In gardens, this can include covering crops with protective netting and screening greenhouses; using mulch to inhibit weed growth; and adding physical barriers such as spikes or grid wires to deter birds and insects that damage plants.
Suppression involves reducing the number of pests through control measures that kill or deter them, including herbicides, fungicides, traps, and other products. It can also include integrated pest management, in which natural enemies are encouraged to keep pest populations in check. For example, predatory or parasitic insects that feed on crop pests can reduce the need for pesticides in orchards. These natural enemies can be conserved by incorporating beneficial insect habitat into crop fields or by purchasing and releasing commercially available natural enemies such as the mites that prey on mite pests in orchards or the nematodes that parasitize harmful soil grubs.
Eradication is rare in outdoor pest situations, except where a new pest has been accidentally introduced. However, eradication is often the objective in enclosed environments such as greenhouses and operating rooms of health care facilities, where zero tolerance for pests is required.
Eradication
The ultimate goal of pest control is to eradicate the pest. Eradication requires complete elimination of the pest, including all of its intermediate hosts and all reservoirs in nature. This is accomplished through the use of biological control methods, such as parasites and pathogens.
Biological management includes natural controls, such as predators and parasitoids that ordinarily occur in nature. They reduce a pest population by injuring or eating the pests. The natural enemies then disperse to other areas, reducing the pest population there as well.
Chemical control, such as the application of insecticides, herbicides or fungicides, is a common method to reduce pests. This can be done using natural or synthetic chemicals or biologically altered organisms (e.g., the production and release of sterile insects).
Physical control, such as manual removal or mechanical trapping, can also be used to control pests. However, this can be expensive and time consuming.
Preventive measures, such as frequent cleaning of areas where pests live and quick application of control methods while pest numbers are low, can prevent pest infestations. Suppression methods, such as keeping pest populations below the level of economic injury, restricts pest activity and inhibits growth of existing pest colonies.
In order to determine whether an eradication program can be successful, the pest’s reproductive rate must be reduced to zero or below in all reservoirs. This is an extremely difficult task, since the reproductive rate of a microbe depends on many variables that vary widely throughout the world.
In addition, a number of factors can contribute to a pesticide’s failure, such as the fact that it was not used correctly (i.e., it was not applied in the right place or at the correct time), it was not applied at the appropriate concentration, or it may have targeted a pest at a stage of its life cycle that it was resistant to the chemical. Therefore, it is important to be familiar with all aspects of pesticide application. It is also essential to follow product labels, obtain proper personal protective equipment, and participate in ongoing pesticide training programs.
