Author: Evangelina Hanson

Kansas City Pest Control involves controlling pest populations to a level where they no longer cause unacceptable harm. Preventive steps may include removing sources of food, water and shelter; fixing leaky plumbing; and cleaning up debris and compost piles.

Mice, rats and possums damage furnishings, chew wires and spread diseases including hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, leptospirosis, salmonella and lymphocytic choriomeningitis. Various traps, screens, fences and barriers can be used to limit their access. Nematodes, microorganisms that are engineered to be helpful, can also suppress pest populations by injecting them with disease-causing bacteria.

Taking a proactive approach to pest control, rather than reacting to infestations once they happen, is the best way to save time, money and resources. Preventive pest management focuses on keeping infestations from occurring in the first place by providing a wide range of services, including inspections, baiting, trapping and physical removal of unwanted creatures.

Preventive treatment strategies are most effective for continuous pests such as rodents (mice, rats), insects (cockroaches, ants, fleas, flies, mosquitoes) and plant diseases that are usually present in some numbers under certain environmental conditions. They can also be helpful in preventing sporadic or potential pests from becoming established.

For example, by establishing and maintaining a good soil environment that supports the growth of desirable plants, it is possible to prevent or reduce the number of rodents that may otherwise infest and damage them. Also, by removing or reducing available food and water, shelter, nesting sites and other places where pests can hide, their populations can be controlled or kept to acceptable levels.

Prevention involves regular scouting and monitoring for pest activity. This should include noting the location and frequency of occurrences, as well as estimating the amount of damage. In addition, knowledge of a pest’s life cycle and lifespan is very useful in planning control measures. This is because some pests can be controlled more effectively when they are in the egg, larva, nymph or pupa stages.

Pests that are primarily a nuisance, such as cockroaches and flies, can often be prevented by following basic sanitation principles such as thoroughly cleaning kitchen benches before cooking, keeping garbage receptacles tightly closed and removing contaminated compost. It is also important to regularly inspect and maintain structures for cracks, gaps, and holes that can allow pests in.

Some pests are very difficult to eradicate, especially when they have become established in an area. Eradication is generally only attempted when it can be accomplished without jeopardizing the environment or public health. Examples of this type of control program would be the Mediterranean fruit fly, gypsy moth and fire ant control programs.

Suppression

The aim of suppression is to reduce pest numbers below damaging levels. It is usually combined with monitoring and prevention.

In some situations, such as health care, food production, and food storage facilities, eradication is the goal. Eradication may be difficult or impossible in outdoor settings, where most pests thrive and survive. Eradication is more feasible in enclosed environments, where pests tend to be less resilient and have fewer predators and parasites.

Some methods of suppressing pests involve introducing natural enemies. These are species that kill, feed on, or otherwise negatively impact the pest population. Examples include releasing insect predators or parasites into an area, such as ants or beetles in citrus groves, or introducing fungi that can inhibit the growth of a disease-causing pathogen.

Other techniques, called biological control, are used to alter the organisms that affect pest populations. For example, using pheromones — natural substances that attract, confuse, or deter male insects — can help control pest populations. Juvenile hormones, which interfere with a plant’s normal reproduction cycle, can also lower pest populations.

Many factors can affect the success of any pest management program, including weather conditions, soil type and quality, and availability of water. These factors can influence the number of pests, their ability to reproduce, and the damage they cause.

Good sanitation practices can help prevent and suppress many pests. For example, eliminating weeds by frequent cultivation or mechanical removal can prevent their spread, and storing produce in cold temperatures slows down or eliminates pest infestations. The use of clean equipment, materials, and manure can also reduce carryover of pests from one crop to the next.

Other controls use physical devices to trap or disrupt pests, such as nets, barriers, traps, and fences. Other tools include radiation, chemicals, and electricity. These are often called mechanical or physical controls. Heat, hot or cold, can also reduce pest populations, as can the application of chemicals, such as carbon dioxide. The action of sunlight and wind can also be used to manipulate pest populations. For instance, sanding the surface of a roof to remove cockroaches or swatting flies with a fly catcher can destroy pests without using harmful chemicals.

Eradication

Eradication as a means of pest control is generally applied to introduced pests, with the aim of either removing them from their new range or preventing their spread. Techniques for eradication include spraying with insecticides, using biological agents such as viruses or fungi, or releasing sterile organisms. The definition of eradication is highly variable, with some sources favouring the use of a dictionary definition: “to pull up or out by the roots; to exterminate.” (Webster’s New College Dictionary, 11th edition)

A number of factors determine the effectiveness of eradication as a method of pest control. The population size of the pest, its rate of reproduction, the availability of intermediate hosts and human hosts, and the extent to which human behaviour affects the transmission of the disease are all critical to achieving the goal.

Once a pest has become established, its population grows quickly and is difficult to eradicate, while the cost of control measures rises rapidly as the effort required to reach the eradication threshold increases. It is therefore often a more realistic objective to achieve suppression or containment, rather than eradication.

The Pest Infestation Curve is a useful tool to help develop control programmes, but should be used with care, as the curve is not necessarily predictive of the difficulty of reaching eradication. The curve is a graph that shows how the number of pests in an area changes over time, with higher numbers on the right-hand side of the curve representing more severe infestations and greater costs.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is a comprehensive approach to pest control that relies on combining biological, physical, and chemical methods. Biological methods include natural enemies, parasitoids, and herbivores, while physical methods involve trapping and spraying. Chemical methods typically rely on the release of toxic substances, but modern environmental concerns are leading to reduced use of harmful chemicals.

When All Things Pest Control conducts a pest treatment, we generally dust the weep holes in walls and ceiling voids as well as cockroach and spider traps. We also advise our clients not to mop floors immediately after treatments, as it can inhibit the ability for the treatment to bind with surfaces. This is particularly important around skirtings and kick boards.

Natural Forces

Many of the organisms that are considered pests in nature – invertebrates, bacteria, fungi, viruses, nematodes, weeds and vertebrates – have natural enemies that keep them under control. These natural enemies may be predators, parasitoids or disease pathogens. Using these natural forces can help reduce pest populations and damage without the use of harmful chemicals, and can provide a sustainable back-up to other management tactics such as cultural controls and biological control.

When a pest problem is large enough to threaten human health and safety, the environment or economic losses, regulatory controls are used. These can include quarantine and eradication programs. Regulatory control also includes improving farming practices to reduce pest problems, such as crop rotations, avoiding monocropping and leaving field margins for natural enemies to provide shelter.

Monitoring is a critical first step in any pest control plan, whether it is based on prevention, suppression or eradication. It helps identify the pest and how widespread its activity is, and determine the best strategies for managing it. Monitoring may be done on a field, garden, landscape or building scale and involves checking for the presence of pests and their damage. It also involves identifying factors that influence pest behavior and ecology, such as weather and soil conditions.

Classical biological control is the practice of introducing natural enemies of a pest from other parts of the world to suppress it in its new environment. This may involve searching for the enemy in its home range, importing it from another region, rearing it in captivity and releasing it in the desired area. It is generally a less expensive alternative to chemical pesticides but it has its own ecological risks and can have unintended consequences.

Biological controls may be as simple as releasing ladybugs to eat aphids or as sophisticated as genetically engineered microbes that are released into the environment to fight a specific pest. Both can be cost-effective alternatives to pesticides but they are still therapeutics, which disrupt the ecosystem and must be followed by preventive or suppression methods. Ideally, the goal is to shift to an integrated pest management (IPM) strategy that leverages inherent strengths based on a good understanding of interactions within an ecosystem while using therapeutics as backups.