Pests can cause a lot of trouble, from mites in your cereal to cockroaches in your Amazon boxes. They can also carry diseases and cause property damage.

There are many methods to control pests. Some are natural, while others involve chemicals. Natural processes are usually cheaper and less harmful to the environment. Contact Facility Pest Control now!

Preventive pest control is an approach that focuses on avoiding pest infestations. It can be accomplished through sanitation, minimizing food sources, sealing entry points, and preventing pests from spreading into new areas. It may also involve the use of pesticides to kill existing pests and/or prevent their reproduction. This approach can be less expensive than other methods and is typically more environmentally conscious.

Sanitation practices prevent the spread of pests by removing their food, water, and shelter sources. This includes properly storing, transporting, and disposing of food and garbage. It also means keeping surfaces clean and free of clutter. It is important to regularly inspect and eliminate potential pest entry points, especially around a building’s foundation and along utility lines.

Eliminating entry points can be as simple as using screens on windows and keeping doors closed. It can be more complex, such as modifying the landscape to keep plants away from structures and securing trash cans. It can also be as involved as monitoring food shipments to ensure that pests don’t sneak inside.

Pests often spread disease by chewing on materials or contaminating food and water supplies. Their droppings can trigger asthma attacks and cause other health problems. They can also damage property and disturb artifacts. For example, termites can eat wood and cause structural damage. Rodents, such as mice and rats, can spread diseases like Plague, Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, Lassa Fever, Salmonellosis, and Leptospirosis.

Chemicals are frequently used as a last resort to control pests, but some can be very effective. These include nonresidual pesticides, which lose their toxicity after being applied and don’t persist in the environment, or rodenticides, which kill on contact with the target species.

There are several ways to apply these chemicals, including sprays and dusts. Some repel pests by mimicking their natural odors, while others poison them with toxins that attack specific targets. Some are also designed to be nonpersistent, which allows them to break down more quickly in the environment. Other options are traps, screens, barriers, radiation, and heat.

Suppression

Often, once pests are detected, the goal is to reduce their numbers to an acceptable level. This is called suppression and usually involves the use of chemicals. However, there are also other methods of achieving this, such as physical removal or preventing their reproduction. Ideally, prevention and suppression work together.

In agricultural settings, pests are typically rodents, insects and weeds that damage crops and other plants or spoil produce. Pesticides are the most common pest control method in crop fields, but their increasing price and unwanted side effects are causing some farmers to seek alternatives.

Natural enemies are organisms that naturally regulate populations of pests through predation, parasitism, herbivory, pathogens, and competition. They occur in all ecosystems, including wildland and natural areas as well as in urban and agricultural settings.

Predation and parasitism can be caused by birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians, mammals, and other organisms. Plants and plant-like organisms (fungi, bacteria, mycoplasmas, and nematodes) can also inhibit or kill insect pests.

Many of these natural enemies coexist with pests in the same habitat and their impact on each other can be null, additive, antagonistic or synergistic. For example, predators may suppress the growth of a pest by eating its eggs or larvae, while parasitoids may inhibit the development of a pest species by attacking it at different stages of its life cycle.

Other environmental factors can also affect the strength of natural enemy-pest regulation. For example, weather conditions such as temperature, light, day length and moisture can influence the activity of pests, their ability to reproduce or the speed of their development.

Chemicals used for suppression of pests should always be carefully chosen and applied to minimize harm to the environment or people. Before applying a pesticide, the type of pest to be controlled should be identified through surveys or scouting programs. This information can help decide which pesticide to apply, and how much pesticide is needed. In addition, careful application of sprays can minimize harm to non-target organisms. For example, surface sprays can be directed away from food, cooking utensils and other items that might come into contact with them.

Eradication

An important part of pest control is eradicating pests once they become established. Eradication is done with the goal of removing all of the pests in an area so that they cannot recolonize it. Ideally, this should be done using methods that are environmentally friendly and have minimal impact on other organisms.

Some pests are continuous and require regular, ongoing control; others are sporadic and need control only occasionally. Still other pests are potential pests, organisms that are not pests under most circumstances but may become a problem in certain conditions. For example, a deer is a natural predator of some plants and can help keep pest populations down; however, the deer may be killed or controlled when it enters an orchard or other cropping areas.

A successful eradication program requires accurate identification of the pest and knowledge about its life cycle. Often, pesticide failures are caused by improper identification of the pest or the use of an inappropriate type or dosage of pesticide. It is also important to know when a pesticide will be most effective, so that it can be applied at the time of highest effectiveness.

Detection and identification of exotic pests is critical for the success of eradication programs. There are many different methods to detect and identify exotic pests, including trapping, mass trapping, pheromone and blunder lures, and baiting. There are also non-toxic alternatives to chemical treatments, such as replacing the air in a room with inert gases (such as carbon dioxide or nitrogen) so that insects die due to lack of oxygen.

It is important to have monitoring programs to determine when it is necessary to treat for a particular pest, and what the action threshold should be. For example, a pest that causes economic damage at a certain level should be treated to prevent it from spreading; however, if the number of pests falls below the action threshold, treatment is not required. Monitoring will allow the user to understand when a treatment is needed and whether it was successful.

The department is mandated to eradicate a number of exotic pests that have been found in the County, such as whitestem distaff thistle on tulips and deciduous magnolias; tulip tree scale on tulips; and Iberian star thistle on waterways.

Natural Forces

Many pests are controlled naturally by a variety of organisms, including predators, parasitoids, and herbivores. The abundance of natural enemies, the quality of the habitat surrounding crops, and agricultural management practices all affect the density of pest populations.

Some pests are continuously present and require regular control. Others are sporadic or cyclical and require control only in certain circumstances. Pest control is often accomplished by introducing new natural enemies into the field to increase population densities and suppress outbreaks. Some pests are also controlled by using resistant varieties, cultural practices that reduce pest damage, and mechanical and physical controls that kill or block them from the crop.

The effectiveness of natural enemies in controlling pests depends on the availability and abundance of both their host and prey, landscape or crop characteristics, and the interaction between the two (see “The Four Stages of Natural Pest Control” below). The development of natural enemy models that predict how well a particular crop-pest-enemy system will work at a variety of landscape to global scales will enable sustainable agriculture in which the use of pesticides is reduced or eliminated.

Models of the natural pest-control potential of crop-pest-enemy systems can be based on observations or on theories of how a particular system should function. These models can be used to guide the design of agricultural landscapes and to build frameworks that bridge ecology and agroeconomics.

Observations of the natural pest-control ability of a particular crop-pest-enemy combination can be collected by researchers or growers who study a specific problem. These observations may include the occurrence of a natural enemy species, the number and types of pests, and the amount of damage caused by each pest. Observations can be used to establish “living databases” of crop-pest-enemy combinations and associated traits, along with environmental variables such as landscape or climate characteristics, management regimes, and biogeographic regions.

Adding or removing land-use features, such as natural habitat, can significantly impact the performance of a pest-control system in an agricultural landscape. For example, a natural enemy species introduced to the US from Europe that attacks alfalfa weevils (Curculionidae) has significantly reduced their density and outbreak frequency, eliminating the need for farmers to spray insecticides against them.