Pests can disrupt the health and productivity of plants, animals, and structures. They can also cause disease in people and pets.

Pest control includes prevention — keeping pests from entering the area; suppression — reducing pest numbers to an acceptable level; and eradication — destroying an entire pest population. For professional assistance, contact Pest Control Kansas City.

The best way to prevent pests from infesting a commercial or residential property is with regular maintenance, including thorough inspections and effective deterrents. These preventative measures are a lot more affordable than dealing with the costly effects of a full-blown infestation.

Pests pose a number of threats to health and safety, from rodents spreading diseases and chewing through structures to flies polluting food and triggering allergies. Even harmless insects can irritate people with stings, bites, and splatters. Preventive pest control techniques include sanitation practices, meticulous food storage, and sealing entry points into the home.

Clutter provides places for pests to breed and hide, so cleaning up clutter can reduce the risk of an infestation. Ensure that trash cans and bins have tight lids, and regularly remove garbage from the premises. Keep food containers sealed, and make sure to wash used ones before reusing them. Avoid storing dried foods in open or glass containers, as this will attract pests.

Sealing cracks and crevices in walls, foundations, and vents is a great way to prevent termites, ants, and other pests from entering a building. Make sure to seal these areas well, and caulk any holes that could allow moisture to seep in and damage the structure.

Maintaining the garden and landscape is another important aspect of preventive pest control. Keep compost piles away from the house, and trim back plants and shrubs to the edge of the property to prevent them from reaching the roofline.

In addition, storing firewood properly is an excellent preventive measure against pests. Wood mulch is a major attractant to insects, and shredded or pulverized organic material is a good substitute for this substance.

Lastly, regularly inspecting clothing, linens, and woollens before storing them will reduce the risk of moth infestations. Laundering or dry-cleaning these items will also help to remove any accumulated moth pheromones and other repellant chemicals that can cause an infestation.

Suppression

Pests are unwanted organisms (insects, fungi, nematodes, viruses and weeds) that damage crops, forests, lawns, gardens, human structures, or disturb terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Some pests are also parasites or predators of desirable organisms, and some are simply competitors that can displace species that compete with them for resources. Pest control involves stopping the progression of a pest population, whether by reducing it to an acceptable level or eradicating it entirely. Prevention measures stop pests from entering a field or site and include using pest-free seeds and transplants, avoiding soil disturbance during planting, irrigation scheduling that minimizes disease problems and prevents excessive watering, cleaning tillage and harvest equipment between fields, and eliminating alternative hosts or sites for insect pests and plant diseases.

Monitoring allows you to see how many pests are in the field, garden, or landscape and what kind of damage they’re doing. Correctly identifying pests is critical; if you don’t know what you’re dealing with, you may take inappropriate action. Monitoring may be as simple as checking a trap or as elaborate as checking weather and soil conditions to predict when pests will reach damaging thresholds.

Suppression measures reduce the numbers of pests to an acceptable level, but should cause as little harm to other organisms as possible. Some of these methods can be physical or mechanical, such as traps or barriers to keep out rodents, mulches and tarps to reduce weeds, or steam sterilization of the soil to kill pathogens. Other techniques can be chemical or biological. Chemical suppression tactics include applying insecticides or fungicides, but these should only be used when monitoring indicates that they are needed according to established guidelines.

Biological controls use natural organisms to control pests, such as predators and parasites of insects or nematodes that control weeds and disease organisms. Chemical products that mimic natural substances, such as hormones, are also available, but they should only be used when monitoring shows that their use is necessary and when they can be applied safely to the pest. Always read and follow product labels and safety precautions when using any pest control method.

Eradication

Eradication is a rare goal in outdoor pest situations, with prevention and suppression the usual objectives. However, it is more common in enclosed environments such as homes, offices, hospitals, and food processing facilities where some pests are difficult or impossible to control with preventive measures alone. In these settings, sanitation practices, such as frequent garbage pickup and sealing food in containers to limit access, can reduce the amount of feed or shelter available for pests. In addition, the use of pest-free seeds and transplants, and sterilization of soil or equipment help to prevent spread.

The eradication of pests and diseases requires an enormous effort at local, national, and international levels. Eradication programs are usually based on assumptions about the size of the target population, the rate at which the microbe or pest reproduces, and its ability to survive without human contact. It is important that eradication efforts be based on the best available information.

If an eradication program does not succeed, it is because of failures in the underlying management systems. For example, a nonhuman host is discovered (as in the case of yellow fever) or the tools of eradication (insecticides and vaccines) are made obsolete by resistance (as with malaria). Civil strife and lack of political commitment may prevent a program from being executed in critical areas where a disease makes its last stand (as with guinea worm).

In some cases, an eradication strategy is not cost-effective. The cost of future infections and vaccinations should be compared with the cost of eradication to determine whether it is in the public interest.

Chemical

A wide variety of chemical pest control solutions are available, from repellents that keep pests away to poisons that kill them. Chemical controls tend to work quickly and often provide immediate results, but they can be dangerous to people and the environment when improperly used. In addition, the toxins in many chemicals can cause resistance in target organisms. Rotating pesticides or using biological controls can help reduce the occurrence of resistant pests.

Biological Control

Biological control is the use of living organisms (natural enemies) to reduce pest numbers. These include beneficial insects and mites, predatory birds, mammals, nematodes, and microorganisms that cause disease (pathogens). Biological control agents are often less hazardous to humans and the environment than chemical pesticides, and they can be effective on weeds, diseases, or insect pests that have developed resistance to synthetic chemical controls. Biological controls are part of integrated pest management programs, which are aimed at managing insect, weed, or plant disease problems without using chemical pesticides.

There are three broad categories of biological control: classical, augmentation, and conservation. Classical biological control involves the importation of natural enemies from their native habitats and their subsequent release in order to establish a sustainable population that suppresses the pest. This is used primarily against exotic organisms that have inadvertently been introduced to new locations and whose populations are out of balance with their native habitats.

Researchers go to the pest’s native habitat and study the population and its interactions with natural enemies, then ship promising natural enemies back to be tested for their ability to suppress the pest in cultivation. Many exotic weeds and plants that were once widespread pests in California have now been successfully controlled by natural enemies introduced in this manner.

Augmentative biological control is the supplemental release of natural enemies in an attempt to boost populations already present in the cropping system. For example, in greenhouse production of vegetables and flowers, periodic releases of the parasitoid Encarsia formosa can reduce the number of greenhouse whiteflies. Alternatively, the cropping system may be modified to favor the natural enemy, a practice known as habitat manipulation.

The goal of conservation biological control is simply to conserve existing natural enemies to reduce the number of pests. This is done by making choices such as cultural practices (e.g., hand weeding), habitat manipulation (e.g., creating wetlands to support predatory fish), judicious use of pesticides (e.g., selective and timing), and ant control (e.g., removing honeydew from ants’ feeding sites). In addition to these measures, you can help promote the population of natural enemies by choosing nonpersistent chemical pesticides that do less harm to natural enemies than persistent chemicals.