Pests can cause many problems, from food contamination to customer health implications. Therefore, it is important to identify pest infestation early on and act quickly.
Look out for specks or brown pellets (pest excrement), mud tubes, and other signs of pest activity. Monitoring helps us predict pest populations and understand how they affect their environment, which can help us select the best management strategy. Contact Pest Control Woodland Hills CA now!
Prevention is the best method of reducing pest infestation and limiting the damage they cause. Preventative measures include:
- Cleaning up areas where food, water and shelter for pests are available.
- Keeping garbage cans tightly closed.
- Storing supplies in sealed containers.
- Disposing of spoiled food promptly.
- Maintaining proper building and facility maintenance to shut down entry points and harborage spots for pests.
In commercial and industrial settings, preventative pest control is usually a regular part of the facility maintenance routine. A trained professional can develop a program to inspect and treat for pests, focusing on hot spots identified during the initial inspection. He or she can then recommend sanitation products and practices, correct storage procedures, and building and site modifications that will help prevent the recurrence of pest problems.
An effective pest prevention program is essential to the health and safety of employees, visitors and customers. Many pests carry diseases that can be spread to people or animals through bites, stings, or other contact. Examples of pest-borne diseases are fleas that can spread tapeworms, cockroaches that can spread bacterial diseases, and rodent droppings that can spread Salmonella poisoning.
Pests often are more troublesome when they are sporadic rather than continuous. Their presence and abundance are generally predictable if certain environmental conditions are present. These include favorable weather, specific food sources, or conditions that encourage pest development such as poor plant health, nutrient deficiencies, disease organisms, or other factors.
Some plants, materials, and equipment are resistant to specific pests, which can reduce the need for pest control methods. Other strategies may involve manipulation of the environment to make it less favorable for the pests, such as changing soil conditions to discourage plant growth that is attractive to pests, removing or covering up food and water sources, reducing moisture levels, using door sweeps and sealing expansion joints, and keeping garbage cans tightly closed.
Sometimes, eradication of an entire pest population is possible, particularly in outdoor situations. For example, the eradication of Mediterranean fruit flies and gypsy moths has been achieved in some areas. In general, eradication is less of a goal than prevention and suppression because it can be difficult to achieve and may have adverse environmental impacts.
Suppression
The purpose of pest suppression is to reduce a pest population to an acceptable level. This is accomplished by using various control tactics that cause as little harm as possible to living organisms and nonliving surroundings. These tactics may include chemical (pesticide) control, biological control, cultural control, physical control and sanitation. An integrated pest management strategy (IPM) usually employs several different control tactics and uses them in a planned, methodical way. This minimizes disruption of the environment at the treatment site and prevents pest resistance to chemicals.
The proper identification of a pest is the first step in any control program. Accurate identification helps you determine whether or not a pest is causing damage and, if so, how much. It also enables you to choose the best control tactic for the situation.
In most cases, the best way to suppress a pest is to use natural enemies — predators, parasites or disease agents that kill or limit pest populations. In addition to preventing or suppressing pests, these natural enemies can help to restore balance to ecosystems.
Other natural controls include cultural practices that alter the environment or condition of the host plant to make it less attractive to a pest. These include crop rotation, cultivating the soil, varying planting and harvesting times, using trap crops, thinning cultivated plants and pruning or removing dead or damaged parts of the plant.
Chemicals, or pesticides, are often used to quickly and economically reduce large numbers of a specific pest. However, sometimes pesticides fail to control a pest problem. This might be because the pest is resistant to the pesticide, because the pest was not in the target area at the time of the application or because the chemical was applied incorrectly.
Other types of physical controls include traps, screens, barriers and fences that physically block or restrict the movement of a pest. Devices that modify the pest’s environment, such as pheromones and juvenile hormones, can also be useful in controlling certain pests. Sanitation techniques, such as improved cleanliness, eliminating pest harborage, increasing the frequency of garbage pickup and decontaminating equipment, animal carriers and tools, can also prevent or suppress some pests.
Eradication
As international travel and trade increase, organisms that threaten plant health are increasingly carried between countries. Eradication is the removal of a pest from an area or region, preventing it from reestablishing itself. This involves a wide range of activities, including surveillance and containment. It is not possible to eradicate all pests, but the goal should be to reduce the number of pests to a level where they cause little or no economic injury.
Once an eradication programme is initiated, the first step is to conduct a preliminary investigation that considers the circumstances of detection or discovery, information on the biology and economic impact of the pest, and the availability of resources for eradication (see ISPM 2: Framework for a risk assessment). It is also important to identify any weaknesses in phytosanitary measures that contributed to the presence of the pest and that may be required to prevent its reintroduction.
After the initial investigation, a management team should be established to provide direction and coordination of eradication efforts. The team should include experts from all sectors of the industry, and where a particular sector is most affected by the pest, that group should be represented on the management team.
In addition, a variety of control options should be described or discussed, with anticipated advantages and disadvantages, including cost-benefit. These should be evaluated based on the life cycle of the pest, climatic effects and the efficacy of each method. It is not uncommon for multiple methods to be needed, especially for eradicating very persistent pests such as weeds and some insects.
Chemical controls can be particularly effective for eradicating some species of invasive plants. However, the use of any pesticide must be carefully managed to minimize the risk of harming desirable species and other people. For example, birds can become harmed if they feed on a crop treated with insecticide, and soil can be poisoned if chemicals are used in excess.
Once the eradication programme is completed, the absence of the pest should be verified using criteria established at the beginning of the programme and documented. NPPOs should keep this documentation in case importing countries require it to support claims of pest freedom.
Monitoring
Monitoring is the regular inspection of a field, building, or landscape to identify pests and how many are present. It also helps you determine whether or when pest control is needed. This is the core of integrated pest management (IPM). Thorough inspections, combined with accurate pest identification and careful evaluation of pest damage, enable effective decisions on when and how to use insecticides.
Using IPM reduces your reliance on chemical pesticides, which can cause pollution, adverse effects to beneficial organisms and other plants, and development of resistance by pests. It also emphasizes the use of natural enemies, habitat manipulation, modification of cultural practices, and other nonchemical methods to control pests. IPM strategies still allow for the occasional use of chemical treatments when necessary to control persistent pests. However, treatment is always based on monitoring results and minimized to avoid harming humans, pets, livestock or other crops.
Regular monitoring is an important part of any pest control program. It’s possible to prevent most pest problems by detecting and correcting any plant or crop injury early on. Depending on your situation, monitoring may involve identifying and counting pests, or collecting samples for laboratory testing and identification.
Many of the tools required for pest monitoring are easy to obtain and use. These include:
A flashlight is useful in finding pest harborage areas in dark, secluded places like basement sills, behind walls, and inside cabinets/closets. A magnifying glass can help you identify insect parts, frass (excrement), and other evidence of pest presence or activity.
A variety of traps are available for catching pests. Some traps, called “passive” traps, lure pests by mimicking the environment in which they live and hunt. Other traps are baited with an attractant or pheromone and catch pests that enter or approach the trap. For example, some types of traps are specifically designed to catch stored product pests such as flies and rodents.
A phenology calendar or degree-day model can help you track the seasonal development of pests and related disease and weed outbreaks. But these can be time consuming to prepare and use in the field. Hence the need to develop a system that can quickly and accurately collect real-time insect images for pest identification and warning.