Pests are organisms that damage or spoil crops, livestock, and homes. They may also spread disease.
Threshold-based decision-making involves scouting and monitoring to see if pest numbers are high enough to warrant action. Preventive techniques include removing sources of food, water, and shelter. Clutter should be removed as it provides hiding places for pests. Contact Pest Control Kuna ID now!
Correctly identifying pests (insects, mites, diseases, weeds, vertebrates) is the first step in any successful pest management program. This includes not only the determination of whether or not control is necessary, but also the choice of methods and the timing of their application. Pest identification often requires close inspection to determine the species, as even closely related organisms may differ in their life cycles and behaviors.
In addition, the physical forms of a pest can vary at different stages or times in its life cycle, or as it changes in environment and food sources. Thus, it is important to have a good reference, such as a field guide, or the services of an entomologist to help with identification.
If you are not sure what kind of pest you have, a good place to start is with the Free Pest ID Center. MMPC entomologists will analyze your specimen (or pictures of the pest or insect bites) and provide a diagnosis and suggestions for treatment. The Center is staffed Monday through Friday from 8:30am to 6pm. You can upload your specimen, send a photo by email, or call in to talk to an entomologist during these hours.
It is very important to monitor pest populations to detect when they are at their most vulnerable. This will allow you to take advantage of “windows” in their life cycle when they are easy to control. For insects, these windows are typically during the immature or egg stage. For weeds, they are usually during the seedling or first-growth stage. For diseases, they are often easiest to manage in the early stages of an outbreak.
For example, flies and moths can be very difficult to kill once they have developed into adults, but a simple spray of the appropriate pesticide can eliminate them at a much earlier point in the cycle. Similarly, a careful review of the biology of potential pests can also reduce the need for chemicals.
There are many ways to reduce the need for pesticides, including eliminating the food and shelter that attract them, removing water sources where they can breed, and making it hard for them to get inside buildings. Examples of these techniques include screening or caulking exterior openings, storing materials off the ground where pests can crawl on them, directing surface water away from the building foundation, and removing leaf litter and other debris from under plants and equipment.
Pest Prevention
The best way to deal with pests is to prevent them from coming onto your property in the first place. Preventative pest control involves a number of steps, including sealing entry points, keeping garbage cans tightly closed, and eliminating hiding places. It is also important to eliminate attracting factors such as food sources, water, and shelter. Finally, it is important to be able to identify the pests you are dealing with so that you can properly apply pest control methods.
Monitoring means checking your field, landscape, home, or building regularly to see which pests are present and how many of them there are. This allows you to assess whether or not the pests are causing damage and, if so, what kind of control is needed. Monitoring also provides information on the life cycle of a pest, which can help you determine when it is most appropriate to apply control measures.
Pests are a nuisance, and they can cause health problems for people and pets. They can also cause economic damage to crops and structures. In addition, certain pests can spread diseases and create fire hazards by chewing through electrical wiring. The most common pests include ants, cockroaches, fleas, rodent droppings, and mosquitoes.
Eradication of pests is often impractical in outdoor situations, but it is sometimes attempted when specific pests threaten human health or the economy (such as the gypsy moth and Mediterranean fruit fly). In enclosed environments, such as dwellings, schools, hospitals, offices, and food processing and preparation facilities, eradication may be a more realistic goal.
Avoiding pests altogether is usually the best option, but if you do have a problem, it is important to take action quickly. If a pest is not controlled in time, it can become established and difficult or impossible to get rid of. The most effective pest control methods are those that use a combination of tactics, and which ones to choose depends on the type of pest you have and its environmental demands. For example, it is generally not necessary to use pesticides that are dangerous to humans, and you should always follow all pesticide labels and safety warnings.
Pesticides
A pesticide is any chemical, biological agent, or physical substance used to kill, repel, or control organisms that are considered pests. Pesticides include herbicides for destroying unwanted plants, insecticides for controlling insects, nematodes for killing microscopic worm-like organisms that feed on plant roots, and fungicides for eliminating fungi that cause mildews, molds, and blights. Some pesticides are also bactericidal and can kill disease-causing microorganisms on inanimate objects.
When used correctly, pesticides bring significant primary benefits – the direct gains expected from their use. For example, when an insecticide kills caterpillars eating a cabbage crop, it will bring the primary benefit of higher yields and improved quality of the cabbage. Secondary benefits result from the indirect effects of pesticides on other organisms that affect the crop, such as the beneficial insects that pollinate crops or prey on pests. These indirect benefits are harder to establish than the effects of a specific pesticide on a single organism, but can be powerful justifications for pesticide use.
Pesticides have adverse effects on non-target organisms and the environment, including humans. Proper pesticide use decreases these risks to levels deemed acceptable by regulatory agencies. However, even with proper use, some pesticides have a high risk of poisoning or other adverse health effects when ingested by people, pets, livestock, and wildlife.
Most pesticides are manufactured using hazardous chemicals, and they can contaminate the environment. This contamination can have a variety of impacts, from the deterioration of soil to the demise of ecosystems. For example, a pesticide can enter the water supply through runoff and infiltrate the human food chain, or pollute airways and soils. In addition, pesticide residues in the food supply can increase the risk of chronic diseases from consuming foods contaminated with the chemicals.
Other environmental effects of pesticides are damage to wildlife habitat and waterways, the loss of biodiversity, and the buildup of resistant pests. For example, the herbicides 2,4-D and diuron and the insecticides chlorpyrifos and diazinon are often found in urban streams. Concentrations of these and other pesticides commonly exceed guidelines for protecting aquatic life in these waters.
Integrated Pest Management
Integrated Pest Management is an approach to managing pests and their damage that uses information about the biology of the organisms, how they interact with their environment and the available control methods to prevent unacceptable levels of pest damage by using the least amount of chemical treatment. It integrates biological, physical and crop specific (cultural) management strategies and practices to grow healthy crops while minimizing risks to human health, the environment and natural resources.
The key to successful IPM is monitoring and evaluation. Pests should be monitored frequently, as often as once a week in some cases. This will help to determine when the pests have reached a level that requires action. This is the action threshold, a point at which the pest population or environmental conditions indicate that pest control is needed.
Before any pest control measures are taken, the monitoring data must be analyzed to determine what type of controls are needed. The action threshold and the monitoring results will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of control methods in terms of their cost, risk and the impact on beneficial insects. Less hazardous controls are selected first, such as pheromones to disrupt mating or trapping to capture pests, followed by cultural controls such as changing the timing of watering, use of weed barriers or crop specific cultural practices to reduce the pests ability to survive and reproduce. If the less hazardous controls fail, the final resort would be the use of targeted or broadcast spraying of chemical pesticides to control the pest.
In the early 1980’s, IPM was developed in response to steadily increasing pesticide use, resulting in pest control crises, the emergence of resistant pests and concern for environmental degradation. It combined the efforts of entomologists, plant pathologists, nematologists and weed scientists with environmentalists and public health officials.
Integrated Pest Management is the way to maintain a garden, yard or field without harming people, pets, other animals, plants or the environment. The National Road Map for Integrated Pest Management, coordinated by the Federal Integrated Pest Management Coordinating Committee, provides leadership on IPM issues.
