Simi Valley Pest Control is an ongoing process to prevent or reduce unwanted organisms that damage or spoil crops, property, and/or people. Control options include exclusion, barriers, traps, spraying and baits.
Prevention is best when a pest’s population can be monitored and thresholds established. Scouting and monitoring activities can provide clues as to when action may be required.
Prevention is a broad term that describes a strategy to avoid pest infestations by using best practices to reduce the need for treatment. It is usually a much cheaper and less time-consuming approach than pest control once an infestation occurs. Prevention also helps reduce the risk of re-infestations and the need for more drastic and often costly treatments.
Preventive strategies include monitoring, inspection, sanitation and cleaning, exclusion and physical barriers. They may involve establishing a protocol for staff to inspect incoming shipments for pests, determining what areas of a facility need to be wet washed rather than dry washed to avoid moisture seeking pests such as cockroaches and flies or using screens and traps to physically block pests from entering buildings. It is also important to understand a pest’s lifespan and life cycle so that preventive measures can be targeted at the proper stages of their development.
In outdoor environments, some plants, animals and structures are naturally resistant to certain pests. This resistance is a result of the presence of natural chemicals that deter or inhibit a pest from attacking its host and developing to harmful levels. The weather also affects pest populations directly or indirectly by changing normal patterns of plant growth, reproduction and movement. Birds, reptiles and other predatory species, parasitic organisms and disease pathogens naturally suppress or eliminate pest populations.
Many pests are drawn to warm, moist areas where they can hide or spawn. Preventive measures include sealing cracks and crevices, repairing window and door seals, storing food in airtight containers, sweeping up crumbs and wiping down surfaces to eliminate sticky residues that attract pests. Adding dehumidifiers to damp areas can be helpful in reducing the conditions that promote pest activity.
Suppression
Suppression refers to reducing pest populations below an acceptable level, usually through natural enemies. Accurate pest identification is critical to the success of any pest control strategy. Incorrect identification can lead to unnecessary use of chemicals, reducing both cost and effectiveness.
In general, predators and parasitoids regulate insect pest populations in nature by reducing the number of insects that reach maturity and reproduce. However, different natural enemy guilds have varying effects on pest populations because they target different life stages. For example, parasitoids may target the early larval stage while ground-dwelling predators prey on mature adults. This means that the overall impact of natural enemies on a pest population is less than the sum of their individual, complementary effects.
A recent study using data from the U.S. National Science Foundation-funded Kellogg Biological Station Long-Term Ecological Research sites found that natural insect suppression gains a significant boost when agricultural landscapes include a high proportion of natural, non-crop habitat. The study also suggests that a variety of management practices could be used to improve the performance of natural enemies in agricultural settings.
Threshold levels for pests must be determined prior to taking action, based on esthetic or economic considerations or on the potential health impacts of certain pests. For instance, most people are willing to tolerate a small number of rodents in their homes, but will take action if they scavenge enough food to threaten the health of their pets or children.
Monitoring of insect, weed, mollusk and vertebrate pests is usually done through trapping or by scouting. For microbial pests, such as bacteria, fungi and viruses, monitoring often focuses on identifying the presence of the organism, along with factors that can influence its growth or spread. These factors may include environmental conditions, such as temperature and moisture.
Eradication
Pest control is the management of pests (rodents, ants, cockroaches and termites) in order to protect people, animals, plants and property. It includes any action taken to remove or destroy these creatures, including using baits and traps, spraying chemicals, and physical removal or destruction. Pests cause disease, loss of food or crops, damage buildings and other structures, and eat away at the foundations and other parts of the home or business. They also spoil flowers, kill livestock and other valuable crops. They are the source of a variety of diseases including Plague, Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, Lassa Fever, Salmonellosis, and Leptospirosis.
Eradication is the elimination of a species from an area to the point that recolonization is unlikely. It is a difficult and expensive proposition and, to date, only two species have been eradicated: screwworms and cattle ticks. Cost-benefit analyses of eradication programs often suffer from biases that underestimate costs and overestimate benefits.
Chemicals used in pest control may be poisonous or highly toxic, and can harm humans, pets, livestock, and other living things if not handled correctly. They can also be dangerous to the environment and cause soil and water pollution. In addition, over time pests can develop immunity to the chemicals and become resistant.
The natural or organic method of pest control uses natural products to prevent and eliminate pests. This is usually cheaper than the chemical pest control option, and it is safer for human and animal health as well as the environment. This is a slower process than the chemical option, and it takes more work to maintain, but it is effective in the long run. In addition, this approach can be more environmentally friendly if implemented correctly.
Mechanical or Physical Controls
In some cases, pests can be controlled by using mechanical or physical controls. This can involve traps that catch and kill the pests or barriers that prevent them from accessing plants. Barriers can include tarps, fences, or screens that keep pests out of areas. Traps can include sticky or pheromone traps that lure and capture pests, which then die or become unable to reproduce.
For instance, if an apple orchard is being impacted by codling moth, banding trees with burlap might be a simple solution. However, the effort and cost to implement such tactics for a large commercial orchard may make this a less desirable option. Similarly, spraying the ground with diatomaceous earth might be an effective way to control leafminers on a small scale but not so much on a large area of landscape.
When prevention and suppression are not feasible, a variety of cultural, biological, and chemical controls can be implemented to reduce the level of pest activity to an acceptable threshold. Monitoring and scouting are key to these approaches. They must accurately identify the pest and host, determine the level of economic or aesthetic injury, and then decide on a treatment strategy.
Integrated pest management (IPM) strategies consider the whole system when making these decisions, including weeds, disease organisms, and mammal predators that can help manage insect populations. These strategies can also include the use of biological controls, such as parasitoids or nematodes, that disrupt the normal relationship between a pest and its host plant. This approach can be an economical and environmentally sound alternative to chemical pest control. It can be as simple as releasing ladybugs to feed on aphids or more complex, like a microbe-based solution engineered from bacteria.
Biological Control
Biological control is the use of living organisms (predators, parasitoids, nematodes or pathogens) to reduce pest animal and plant populations to noneconomically important levels. Biological control is an integral part of integrated pest management. It relies on natural ecological interactions of predation, parasitism, disease and competition. The term “biological control” is often used interchangeably with “biological pest management.”
A variety of biological agents are available for controlling insects, weeds, plant-parasitic nematodes and vertebrates. Some, such as bacteria and viruses, can suppress growth or cause death in the target organism. Others, such as fungi and spores, infect the insect or weed with special structures that penetrate the cuticle or cell walls.
Most biocontrol agents are native to the area where they are used. They are carefully tested and evaluated by subject-matter experts to ensure they can effectively control the target pests in an environment similar to that of their native range. These steps are often lengthy and expensive.
There are two primary methods of using biological control – conservation and augmentation. In the conservation approach, the goal is to encourage and enhance resident natural enemies in order to reduce pest densities naturally. In augmentation, biological control agents are introduced or released in greater numbers than would normally occur in nature. For example, a predator or parasitoid may be released in high quantities to quickly depress a pest population, or fungi or nematodes may be released at rates of millions or even billions per acre to control a soil-dwelling insect pest.
Biological controls have been slow to be adopted in the National Capital Region because of the more rigorous process for obtaining approval to use them than that of pesticides. However, the NPS Integrated Pest Management Program is working to lessen this paperwork burden and is holding webinars to educate park managers about biocontrols.