Pests can cause damage to homes and crops. Regular inspections and treatment can prevent these problems before they escalate.
Seeing rats, hearing them skitter in walls and ceilings, or finding rice grain-sized droppings are all signs of a rat infestation. Mice are also common pests and can chew through secondhand furniture, food packages, and wires. Contact St Charles Pest Control now!
Prevention is the key to pest control problems. It involves predicting what conditions favor pests and taking action to prevent them from occurring or growing to nuisance proportions. Some natural forces that affect pest populations include climate, the presence of natural enemies, and the availability of shelter, food, and water supplies. Prevention can also involve monitoring and identifying areas where a pest infestation is likely to occur.
Preventative maintenance and cleaning schedules can help prevent pests from becoming a problem. For example, it is important to keep trash containers closed and to remove waste materials promptly. In retail or hospitality settings, it is important to regularly inspect food supplies (such as jars and Tupperware) for pests. This practice helps to reduce the risk of pest infestation by reducing the amount of time that the food is exposed to moisture, dust and other elements.
Structural prevention is another way to prevent pests from entering a building. It involves routine maintenance and specific enhancements to block entry points, such as cracks in walls, rips in screens and vents, and other vulnerable spots. It can also include removing places for rodents to build nests, sealing openings where pipes enter a house, and using door sweeps and insect screens on doors and windows.
Chemical prevention is a method that involves spraying or applying chemicals to kill or repel pests. Some chemicals are dangerous and can cause health problems, so this type of prevention should be done only in a safe manner by qualified pest control professionals. Other chemicals, such as pheromones and juvenile hormones, are used to alter the behavior of pests, for example, by confusing males or delaying reproduction.
The last prevention technique is to be alert for the signs of a pest problem and to respond quickly when it occurs. This includes keeping a regular cleaning schedule, reducing clutter and clearing away debris where pests may hide, and making sure that all food is kept in sealed containers. In addition, it is a good idea to monitor the environment for potential hotspots for pests, such as under leaves and along foundations.
Suppression
Pest control involves reducing the number of pests to a level that prevents unacceptable damage. This can be accomplished by a variety of methods, including prevention and suppression. Prevention is the preferred method because it can prevent a pest problem from developing in the first place. It can also be more cost-effective than controlling a problem once it occurs. In some situations, prevention may not be possible or feasible. Control options include scouting and monitoring, exclusion, physical removal and chemical treatment.
In a home or other structure, prevention includes eliminating the food and water sources that attract pests and keeping areas clean. This can be done by storing food in sealed containers, removing garbage regularly and fixing leaky plumbing. Regular cleaning with a vacuum cleaner, mop and bucket will remove pest hiding places. In addition, caulking cracks and crevices can help prevent pests from entering.
Monitoring is the regular searching for and assessing of pest activity, damage and numbers. It can be done using the scouting tactics described in the Scouting page, as well as by observing the success or failure of corrective measures. This step can include determining how severe a pest infestation is, signs of resistance to pesticides, indications of action by natural enemies or pathogens and damage to the asset being protected (crop, building, etc). See the Monitoring page for more information.
Suppression involves reducing the number of pests once they are present. It is often a combination of prevention and suppression that is required, especially in urban environments where pests share space with people and other organisms that require the same resources. It is also a part of the holistic approach of integrated pest management (IPM) that seeks to use biological, cultural, physical and chemical tools to manage pests.
Biological control is a form of suppression that relies on predators, parasites, and/or pathogens to reduce populations of a targeted pest species without harming beneficial insects or other plants. It can be done by introducing natural enemies into the environment to replace those that have been eliminated by pesticides or by augmenting existing natural enemies with more of them, either in small, repeated releases or in large-scale releases. It can also involve biological modification of the pest itself through the production and release of sterile males or by use of pheromones or juvenile hormones.
Eradication
The goal of eradication is to completely remove a pest population from an area. This is a rare objective in outdoor pest control, where prevention and suppression are usually the focus. In enclosed environments, however, such as residences; schools, hospitals and office buildings; and food processing, storage and preparation facilities, eradication is more feasible because the environment is more controlled. Efforts to eradicate pest populations from these types of spaces may be accomplished through spraying, baiting or trapping.
Generally speaking, most pest control methods fall into one of four categories:
Chemical
Chemical solutions are the fastest to work and deliver instant results. Examples of chemical pest control include repellents, which deter pests from entering your property; insecticides, designed to kill insects; and fungicides, which destroy fungi that harm plants. Chemical pest control products can be found in liquid, aerosol, or powder form and can be sprayed directly onto infested areas.
Physical
Traps, netting and decoys are considered to be physical pest control solutions. These can be a bit more difficult to deal with than other pest control methods, but can be highly effective. They also tend to be less hazardous to people than many other solutions.
Biological
A growing number of pest control companies are now offering organic or natural pest control services. These methods use living organisms to eliminate pests and are often more environmentally friendly than traditional chemicals. Examples of biological pest control are introducing predators into your garden to prey on pests; using plant-based nematodes to combat soil-borne infestations of fungi, which can harm plants and animals; or planting certain flowers near the home that act as a natural repellent against pests such as mosquitoes.
Eradication is a lofty objective for most pest control professionals and can be even more challenging than prevention or suppression. Some problems simply aren’t amenable to eradication, as is the case with disease-causing pests like yellow fever or guinea worm (dracunculiasis). When weighing the options for eradicating a disease, it is important to consider the cost of future infections and vaccinations that would be avoided if eradication were successful, as well as the social benefits of the effort.
Biocontrol
Biological control uses natural enemies (predators, parasitoids, pathogens and competitors) to reduce populations of a pest organism. It is a global scientific strategy for controlling pests that has been in place for over 100 years. This approach seeks to reduce our dependence on synthetic pesticides and has the potential to be a safe, effective and environmentally sound method of controlling weeds, insect pests, vertebrate pests and plant diseases.
The goal of biocontrol is to bring pest numbers below an economic threshold, not to eradicate them completely. This can take years to accomplish. Biological controls are often used as part of integrated pest management, along with other techniques such as suppression and eradication.
NIFA supports research in biological control to find safer, more effective ways of managing pests. Biological control can include introducing, conserving, or augmenting natural enemies of plants. Examples of this are the aphid predator lacewings sold to gardeners for control of aphids, the cottony cushion scale beetles introduced into citrus orchards to control the invasive pest phylloshield, and the alligator weed flea beetle that is now being used to control the invasive exotic grass Alternanthera philoxeroides.
Importation of natural enemies is often referred to as classical biological control, and it is the most common way that people utilize biological control in their landscapes. Whenever an organism that is considered to be a natural enemy of a new, non-native species can be found in its native range, it is collected from that location, undergoes a quarantine period to eliminate the possibility of unintended consequences on other species, such as hyperparasites or pathogens, and then is released into the environment where the target pest has been established.
Biological control is an extremely labor intensive process, but the results can be well worth the effort. There is a great deal of research that goes into the selection, collection and release of natural enemies. Many different factors must be weighed before a biological control agent is approved for use, including the potential for impact on biodiversity and its ability to suppress pest populations to levels below economically damaging or intolerable thresholds.