Pest Control Coquitlam aims to eliminate or prevent damage from pests. It involves reducing food, water, shelter, and entry points for pests. It includes scouting and monitoring, using physical or mechanical barriers first, then escalating to chemical treatments.

Threshold-based decision-making is the best approach to pest control. A few wasps seen in the backyard don’t warrant an action, but a dozen or more in the house might.

Pest control strategies must minimize damage to desirable plants, wildlife and people. The best way to achieve this goal is through prevention. Pest prevention reduces the likelihood of pests being present at an establishment through measures such as sealing entry points, removing food sources and creating physical barriers. Prevention strategies are often incorporated into an integrated pest management (IPM) plan. IPM is a management approach that incorporates monitoring, inspection, identification, habitat manipulation, and modification of cultural practices to prevent pests from entering or damaging property. It uses least-toxic chemical treatments only after monitoring indicates that a pest population is growing out of control. This practice avoids using chemicals if possible, to prevent contamination of the environment, beneficial insects and pets and human health.

Clutter gives pests places to breed and hide, and it provides them with easy access to the food and water they need. Regular cleaning and trash removal help eliminate these sources. Practicing good hygiene is also important in preventing pests from breeding in the first place. This includes keeping garbage bins tightly sealed, avoiding spilled foods or liquids around the house, and maintaining proper sanitary conditions in work areas.

Taking steps to remove pests from the environment can be as simple as sealing cracks and crevices where they may enter, caulking leaky joints and installing wire mesh screens on drains and vents. It’s also important to keep food and water supplies away from the home, including bird feeders and baths. Similarly, timing irrigation watering to mornings rather than nights will help deter nocturnal rodents and other pests seeking these resources near the house.

Threshold-based decision-making is an effective strategy for determining when to apply control methods. For example, a few wasps buzzing around the house don’t warrant controlling them, but if you are seeing more and more of them every day, they are becoming a nuisance that needs to be addressed.

In the case of plant diseases, identifying them in the early stages and managing them with cultural practices and genetic modification can be more effective than treating symptoms once they appear. However, if disease symptoms are already evident, the most effective control method is usually chemical treatment. Choosing the correct chemical and following product label instructions will help ensure that it is used safely and effectively.

Suppression

Natural forces influence pest populations in a number of ways, causing them to rise and fall. In some cases, these forces can help control pest problems, such as limiting the availability of water or food or restricting overwintering sites. Other times, they can hinder pest management efforts by causing an imbalance in population numbers or reducing the effectiveness of natural enemies or physical barriers.

Prevention tactics include preventing pests from entering fields and gardens or inhibiting their spread to new areas. This includes using pest-free seeds or transplants, scheduling irrigation to avoid conditions conducive to disease development, cleaning tillage or harvesting equipment between fields and operations, and eliminating alternate hosts or sites for insect pests and pathogens.

In addition, simple physical or mechanical control methods can be effective. For example, a scouting program can be very effective in keeping populations of certain insects below economic thresholds and to improve plant health. Scouting involves regularly searching for, identifying, and assessing pests and the damage they cause. It also helps you understand the factors that contribute to pest occurrence and intensity. It may include checking traps, counting eggs or larvae, examining plants for signs of pest feeding or damage and surveying weeds, beneficial insects, birds or other predators.

Another suppression tactic is introducing or increasing the numbers of biological control agents to suppress a pest population. These are often mass-reared in insectaries and are specialized to attack specific pest species. To be effective, they must be matched carefully to the pest and environment. They must be introduced at a time when their life cycles match the pest’s and be released in sufficient numbers to suppress the pest population.

Other controls that are used to reduce a pest population or prevent their return include the use of fungicides, insect growth regulators, plant-parasitic nematodes and pheromones. Fungicides and insect growth regulators are a type of chemical pesticide that affect a pest’s ability to grow or reproduce by blocking one or more of the organisms it needs for survival. Plant-parasitic nematodes kill or stunt aphids, mites and other soil insects by attacking them from within. Pheromones are released by a pest’s host to communicate with nearby aphids, mites or other insects in the same species to orient them to the location of food.

Eradication

Eradication strategies for pest control aim to eliminate a disease or pest from an area. These strategies can be implemented on a local, national or international scale. Achieving eradication can be difficult, and the decision to eradicate should consider economic costs and benefits as well as biological factors, such as the presence of an independent reservoir or the effectiveness of diagnostic tools.

A common strategy is classical biological control, which involves introducing one or more natural enemy species of foreign origin to control an exotic (often called introduced or invasive) pest. This is a highly complicated and expensive approach that requires extensive monitoring, testing, quarantine, and rearing of the chosen natural enemy species. Examples include decapitating flies used to control red imported fire ants, and parasitic nematodes such as the cockroach-eating Steinernema carpocapsae that kills flea beetles and thrips in vegetable gardens.

An alternative to classical biological control is augmentative biocontrol, which involves releasing natural enemies that are already present in the area to increase their population to a level where they can suppress the pests without human intervention. This is commonly practiced in greenhouses and some fruit, vegetable and nursery fields. The natural enemies are usually mass-reared in insectaries before being released into the field. Augmentative biological controls typically do not achieve eradication because there is often a time lag between the release of the enemy and its ability to control the pest.

Other types of pest control include biological modification (releasing enemies that are genetically modified to be more effective) and chemical modification, such as using sterile insects or applying chemicals that disrupt the pests’ mating or feeding habits. IPM programs use these methods only when monitoring, identification, and action thresholds indicate that preventive or suppression controls are not working. IPM programs also evaluate each additional control method both for its effectiveness and risk.

An example of a successful eradication program is that for smallpox, which was eliminated through a combination of vaccination and disinfection. Other examples include the elimination of the guinea worm, or dracunculiasis, through water treatment technologies that remove the copepod vector and parasite.

Mechanical or Physical Controls

When the situation calls for it, mechanical or physical controls can reduce pest numbers without using chemical products. Physical methods include picking or scraping pests, removing their eggs and larvae, and tilling the soil to bring up grubs or other underground insects. They also include installing barriers that prevent pests from entering plants or buildings, such as fences, weed cloth, and trap crops. These control techniques are often more effective in small-scale applications, such as a home garden or a backyard vegetable patch. They can also have a lower impact on the environment than chemical treatments, making them more attractive to environmentally conscious customers.

A key challenge in mechanical and physical control is that pests adapt quickly to these tactics, developing resistance mechanisms or behavioral adaptations to avoid or escape traps, and establishing alternate means of accessing host plants or finding water and food. This makes it important to identify the pest properly so that a management method can be developed that fits its life cycle and behavior.

The best way to limit the need for chemical control is by preventing pests from getting established in the first place. This can be done by removing or blocking their access to food, water, and shelter, or by planting host plants that are less attractive or more resistant to the pests. Cultural practices can also help, such as changing irrigation or mulching to reduce disease problems, or by reducing root competition from weeds.

Barriers can be natural or artificial, and they serve an essential role in IPM by serving as the first line of defense against pests. They can be simple structures like fences or weed mats, or more sophisticated devices and materials, such as light deflecting strips or greenhouse covers. In addition, barriers can be created with natural ingredients, such as compost or wood shavings, that offer a protective layer between plants and insects.

Integrated pest management, or IPM, is a flexible approach to managing pests that can be used in urban, agricultural, and wildland or natural areas. Threshold-based decision-making involves scouting and monitoring to determine whether a pest population is growing too rapidly or is damaging plants, and then determining what combination of prevention, suppression, and eradication methods to apply.

Ronnie Hilt

www.divineappetitecafe.com