Pests come into your yard and home because they are attracted to it. Changing what draws them is the best way to stop them.
Keep garbage cans tightly closed and pick up discarded food and trash regularly. Make sure doors and windows have screens and that cracks are patched. Trim bushes and keep wood piles away from your house. Contact Pest Control Clearwater now!
Pests are animals or plants that interfere with human activities. They may cause direct damage to property, food, and health. They may carry disease-causing microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, and protozoa or cause a nuisance by interfering with recreation or causing discomfort or irritation. Common pests include:
- Rodents (e.g., black and brown rats, house mice).
- Insects (e.g., cockroaches, ants, and beetles).
- Birds (e.g., seagulls and pigeons).
- Plant pathogens (e.g., plant diseases).
Prevention strategies aim to make an environment unattractive or hostile to the pests. This includes cultural pest control, obstructive landscaping, planting crops that are detested by the pests, and diversionary elements such as scrap wood piles to draw pests away from valuable crops. Biological controls can also be used to disrupt the pests’ life cycles.
In homes, prevention measures include using screens on windows and keeping them closed. Trash should be removed regularly and stored in containers with tight-fitting lids. Clutter provides hiding places and breeding sites for pests. Sealing cracks and crevices with caulking or steel wool and closing spaces around pipes and drains can help prevent pest infestation. Pest-specific pesticides are available to target specific pests, which will reduce the need for toxic chemicals in general.
Eradication is less of a goal in outdoor situations, but in enclosed environments such as dwellings; schools; offices; hospitals and other health care facilities; and food processing, preparation and storage areas, it is often the objective. In such instances, eradication is often achieved through the use of biological methods.
Before applying any pest control methods, it is important to identify the pests and their characteristics. This will allow you to tailor your control approach. It will also help you avoid unnecessary applications of chemicals, which can be harmful to people and pets and the environment. Identifying the pest will also help you select the best control method. For example, if you are dealing with flies or bees, a flyswatter will suffice, but for rats and other rodents, traps and baits are usually more effective. It is also a good idea to try and eliminate the source of the pest, such as sealing entry points, cleaning trash containers, and removing bird feeders.
Suppression
Pests damage crops and other plants, degrade building exteriors, ruin lawns and garden areas, spoil food, and create health hazards such as rodent droppings that carry disease. They also disrupt natural ecological processes and displace native species. Preventive measures prevent pest infestations from occurring, and suppression strategies limit the growth of existing pest populations. Control methods may be cultural, biological, or chemical. An effective pest management program includes all of these techniques.
Prevention is the first line of defense against pests and should always be used where possible. It includes using pest-free seeds and transplants, irrigating to avoid conditions conducive to disease development, cleaning tillage and harvest equipment between fields or operations, and scouting to identify problems with crop growth and condition, plant pathogens, weeds and insect pests.
Education and awareness also help to prevent pest problems by teaching people what is acceptable and unacceptable in their environments. For example, maintaining cleanliness and removing waste materials such as trash and debris from outdoor areas reduces the attraction of rodents.
Regular monitoring of pest populations and their damage by surveys or scouting programs, weather monitoring and soil testing where appropriate helps to decide when to take action. Infestation levels are compared to economic thresholds established for each field or site, and control techniques are selected based on their effectiveness, cost and environmental impact.
Biological control involves conserving or releasing natural enemies of pests to suppress their populations, such as beneficial insects that feed on mite pests in greenhouses, Encarsia formosa wasps that parasitize the greenhouse whitefly, and parasitic nematodes that kill harmful soil grubs. Many of these organisms can be purchased and released commercially. Augmentative biological control involves increasing the number of a pest’s natural enemies in an area, often by mass-rearing them in insectaries and then releasing them in large numbers to suppress pests. This method is most commonly used in orchards, nurseries, and some vegetable and fruit fields.
Chemical controls, including herbicides and fungicides, are used sparingly in an integrated pest management program because they can be detrimental to the environment. They are generally applied to the foliage of the plants being attacked, so they do not affect adjacent plants. They are typically applied at the time of planting or just before harvest, and they are designed to be rapidly broken down in the field by natural factors such as sunlight and rain.
Eradication
The goal of eradication is to destroy an entire pest population, whether that is an insect, rodent, weed or other organism. This is a difficult goal in outdoor situations where the environment often provides multiple opportunities for pests to live and thrive. Eradication is a common goal in indoor areas, however, where certain pests must not be tolerated, such as the presence of bacteria in operating rooms or other sterile spaces in health care facilities.
The word eradicate comes from the Latin verb eradicare, which means “to uproot” or remove. It is a fitting word for describing the action of pest control. In fact, a good way to understand the concept of eradication is to look at it from the perspective of disease eradication. The World Health Organization has declared only two diseases eradicated: smallpox caused by the variola virus and rinderpest, a deadly bovine disease. Both of these diseases were brought under control through dedicated global efforts.
For museums, eradication strategies may include preventive measures such as cleaning and sealing surfaces to reduce attractants; quarantine, inspection and treatment of artifacts; or structural repair to eliminate entry points for pests. Chemical controls are often used to supplement these preventive measures or when they are ineffective or unavailable. The use of less-risky chemicals, such as pheromones to disrupt pest mating or targeted application of baits or crack and crevice treatments, is preferred. Chemicals that require more direct contact with the pest or its environment, such as broadcast spraying of non-specific pesticides, are usually employed only when monitoring, identification and action thresholds indicate that they are needed.
Eradication failures are often due to improper planning or application. If the wrong pesticide is used or the spraying is not done at the correct time of year, then the desired result cannot be achieved. Pesticide resistance is another common reason for failure. Resistance occurs when the pest develops a tolerance to a specific pesticide. This can be the result of a change in the pest’s biology, its life cycle, or its location at the time of application.
Natural Forces
Natural forces, such as climate, weather, and natural enemies, influence pest populations. These forces, in turn, can help or hinder pest control efforts.
For example, mountain ranges and bodies of water restrict the growth of some pests by providing barriers to movement or limiting food and shelter supplies. Similarly, soil quality, nutrient availability, and fire events can limit or promote plant growth and/or change the population of undesirable plants.
In some cases, natural predators and parasitoids suppress or eliminate pest populations without harming the target crop. This type of control is referred to as biocontrol. Biocontrol agents are typically mass-produced at insectaries and must be matched to the specific pest population in order to be effective.
However, some pests are so successful at disrupting their natural enemies that they can rapidly grow to damaging levels. For example, codling moth population densities can increase to damaging levels if natural enemies are destroyed or if broad-spectrum pesticides are used. The destruction of natural enemies may also result from the use of some herbicides, which are often toxic to beneficial insects and mites.
Physical controls include barriers, fences, and traps that deter or keep out unwanted pests. Many people use plants in their landscapes as natural pest control. For instance, planting melons with radishes in a garden prevents beetles from attacking the melons. Other organic solutions include companion planting, crop rotation, and weeding.
Eradication is seldom a goal in outdoor pest management. Instead, prevention and suppression are usually the goals. Eradication is a more common goal in indoor environments, where pests must be kept out of food processing, preparation, and storage areas.
Chemical pest control uses substances – such as herbicides, insecticides, rodenticides, fungicides, and vertebrate baits – to kill or deter pests. These chemicals are regulated by federal, state, and local agencies in order to protect human health, animal welfare, and the environment. Before a pesticide can be sold or used in the United States, it must go through an extensive process of development and testing. The EPA reviews all pesticides before they are registered for sale or use.
