Often, pests are attracted to our homes and other structures because of the food, shelter, or water they find there. Preventive strategies usually include removing or blocking access to these elements.
For example, keep garbage in containers with tight lids, remove wood piles from the house’s foundation, and trim back shrubs and tree limbs that touch the roofline. Contact Pest Control Meridian ID now!
A good preventive program is vital to controlling pests. Eliminating food sources and water, reducing pheromone attractants, blocking entry, and maintaining sanitation can help eliminate the need for chemical controls.
In museums, prevention includes arranging storage areas, making it difficult for pests to access artifacts and collections. Providing adequate ventilation to reduce moisture levels, removing clutter that can provide hiding places for pests, and cleaning often are important preventive measures. In addition, using non-toxic dusts to fill spaces in walls and under floors can be an effective pest control measure.
Museums should consider implementing a monitoring program for pests to enable them to react quickly when they begin to cause problems. This could include setting traps or baits in places where they are likely to occur, and regular scouting and monitoring of areas by staff. The monitoring program may need to be modified, for example, when the occurrence of one type of pest is detected, so that other methods can be implemented more effectively.
Detecting pests early can save time, money and resources by reducing the need for expensive pest control. In addition, preventing damage to the collection will increase the value of the collection and enhance the visitor experience.
The pest control objectives are to prevent or keep a pest from becoming a problem, suppress pest numbers to an acceptable level, and eradicate a pest infestation as soon as possible. Ideally, the goal is to do this with as little harm to the environment and its components as possible, ensuring that pests are controlled in a way that causes as few health and safety risks as possible.
A pest is an organism (such as fungi, bacteria, insects, rodents, nematodes, or viruses) that invades, degrades, or destroys desirable plants or animals and negatively impacts human activities. A pest can also displace other species and alter ecosystems by affecting the availability of water, soil nutrients, fire conditions, and habitat factors. Pests can cause economic losses by destroying or contaminating crops, damaging buildings, and causing damage to lawns, gardens, and other landscape features.
Suppression
Pests are organisms that damage or threaten human well-being, crops, or landscapes. The goal of pest control is to prevent or suppress the occurrence of pests. Prevention is accomplished through reducing or eliminating the conditions that promote pest infestations, such as frequent cleaning of areas where pests are likely to live. Suppression consists of activities that limit pest activity and population growth to manage pest infestations that have already occurred. Eradication methods, such as insecticide applications to kill existing pests and their eggs, can be used at the site of a pest infestation to quickly reduce pest populations to levels that are not damaging or intolerable.
Most homeowners, gardeners and green industry professionals are seeking alternatives to chemical pesticides for ornamental plants and turfgrasses in their homes, gardens and greenhouses because of environmental concerns, health risks, and impacts on pollinators and beneficial insects. Traditional pesticides are also becoming increasingly expensive for growers and retailers due to increasing regulatory restrictions.
Integrated pest management (IPM) focuses on long-term prevention of pests or their damage through the manipulation of environmental factors, habitat modification and cultural practices, use of resistant varieties, and biological controls. The use of pesticides is reserved for the treatment of problems when monitoring indicates that a harmful organism has reached damaging levels. When using chemical controls, it is important to follow product labels and apply them according to established guidelines to limit environmental and personal safety impacts.
Natural enemies such as parasitoids and predators naturally injure or consume pests to control their populations. Gardeners and greenhouse growers can import, augment, or conserve these natural enemies to help suppress pest populations. These natural enemies are usually selected for their ability to attack the target pest without harming other organisms. They may be introduced by splicing or grafting, inundative releases, or sterile insect cloning.
Biological pest control can also be enhanced by providing habitat useful to the organisms. For example, nematodes that parasitize grubs and other soil-dwelling pests are more likely to thrive in moist, rich soil where they can find their hosts. Nematode sprays can be applied to the soil surface to suppress pest populations. The timing of nematode spraying is crucial. It is most effective when sprayed in the evening or early morning when temperatures and sunlight are lowest.
Eradication
Eradication of pests requires vigilance at local, community, national, and global levels. Its success depends on detecting and stopping transmission as soon as it occurs, before a new cohort of susceptible people appears as a result of births, migration, or the waning effectiveness of prophylactic measures. The success of an eradication effort also depends on adequate surveillance and diagnostic capabilities, along with the ability to interrupt reintroduction of a microbe from a unforeseen reservoir or vaccine strain reversion (as is happening now for guinea worm).
To eradicate a pest, you must remove its food, shelter, and water sources. Often, this can be accomplished by preventing pests from entering a house or building. This includes sealing and repairing all leaks, trimming back overgrown bushes, and clearing away debris near the home. It also means removing waste material that is attractive to pests, such as compost piles and stacks of woodpiles.
Physical traps and netting are used to capture or deter pests. Chemicals can be added to help increase their effectiveness. These include repellents, which stop pests from coming into contact with the chemicals, and insecticides, which kill them once they do come in contact. The use of these chemicals does pose a risk to human health, but most modern chemical solutions have reduced toxicity and do not require repeated applications as some of the older treatments may do.
Another way to reduce a pest population is to introduce natural enemies that will destroy it. This can be done by planting new enemies in an area or by releasing large numbers of existing ones, such as predators or parasites. However, this does not usually constitute eradication because the degree of pest control fluctuates with the availability of these enemies.
Cultural pest control involves making the environment uninhabitable or inhospitable to a pest by obstructive landscaping and other tactics, such as diversionary elements, such as scrap woodpiles that draw pests away from crops. A very drastic measure is fumigation, which pumps a room full of toxic gas to kill the pests inside a building or structure. This method is not recommended for residential homes and should only be undertaken by trained professionals.
Monitoring
Pests can be a nuisance, affecting the health and well-being of people in residential and commercial buildings. They can also damage property and degrade the appearance of gardens or interiors. Regular pest control helps to maintain the value of properties and prevents expensive repairs and replacements.
Insects are probably the most common pests encountered in homes and commercial premises. Some have a scary or unpleasant appearance, like cockroaches, earwigs and silverfish. Others bite or sting, like fleas, bed bugs and ants. And others cause allergies or sensitivities, such as cluster flies and wasps and bees. Rodents are also common pests, especially in residential settings. They damage building structures, create fire hazards and contaminate food and other materials.
Regular pest control is usually carried out by specially trained technicians. It starts with an initial inspection, during which entry points and nesting sites are identified. Based on this information, a treatment plan is created. This might include spraying, baiting or trapping. Inside the building, treatments might be applied using targeted sprays or baits, or with barriers such as rodent-proof screens, or vaporized fumigation. Outside the building, barriers might be placed to stop pests entering from adjoining properties.
Monitoring is essential to pest management because it allows the identification of when a pest population has reached unacceptable levels. Monitoring usually involves checking for the presence of pests, but may also include observing damage and evaluating environmental conditions that might contribute to the growth of pest populations, such as temperature or moisture. Monitoring is site-, crop- and pest-specific, and requires a combination of methods (see Pest Monitoring).
Once a pest problem has been identified, it’s important to consider how it got there in the first place. Eliminating potential entry points, such as poorly fitting doors and windows, air vents and hoist apertures can help to prevent pest infestation. In addition, reducing attractants such as food scraps, moisture and odors can make the environment less attractive to pests. Regular pest control visits allow for quick detection and response to new pest problems before they get out of hand.