Pest Control Irving TX is the management of harmful pests that damage or spoil crops, forests, structures, and other valued natural resources. Control measures can be natural, biological, chemical, or mechanical.
Prevention strategies include eliminating access to food, water, and shelter for pests by regularly removing garbage, fixing leaky pipes, installing door sweeps, and screening windows and vents.
Prevention involves keeping pests out of living or working areas by eliminating their food, water, and shelter sources. This can be done by regularly cleaning and sanitizing areas where food is prepared and eaten, keeping trash cans tightly closed, and sealing all openings into walls and other structures. Regularly disposing of garbage and reducing clutter can also help prevent pest infestations.
If left unchecked, pests can cause serious damage. Wood-destroying insects like termites and carpenter ants can weaken a home, while rodents can chew through wiring, creating a fire hazard and spreading diseases such as Salmonella and E. coli. Other pests, such as fleas and cockroaches, can spread a number of diseases and cause discomfort to people in residential or commercial settings.
Keeping pests out of your home or business isn’t always easy. They are very good at hiding and reproduce quickly, so a persistent effort is required. Some of the best prevention methods include keeping buildings clean, sealing cracks, eliminating standing water, practicing integrated pest management, and enlisting professional help when needed.
Pest control can be divided into three stages: prevention, suppression, and eradication. Prevention is the most important step in controlling pests, as it means preventing an infestation before it begins. Suppression is the next stage, which involves reducing the number of pests to an acceptable level. Eradication is the last stage and involves destroying all of the pests.
Some pests, such as mosquitoes and fleas, are a constant problem and need to be controlled constantly. Others, such as cockroaches and rats, are sporadic and require less frequent control. Still other pests, such as ticks and hornets, are only present seasonally and do not require control at all under normal conditions.
Ideally, a pest should be controlled only when it is causing or expected to cause more harm than is reasonably acceptable. The goal of any pest control strategy should be to cause minimal damage to the environment and human health, with the least use of chemical controls. In general, this can be accomplished by avoiding the pests whenever possible, using non-chemical controls, and destroying the pests only when absolutely necessary.
Suppression
A pest infestation can affect human health, destroy crops, spoil stored food, and damage buildings or property. Control methods vary and are often a combination of strategies. They can also include incorporating environmental features that prevent pests from getting where they are not wanted. Preventive strategies aim to reduce the chance of a pest problem before it occurs, and are usually economical and environmentally responsible. These approaches may involve cleaning up areas where pests are likely to live and avoiding attracting them by using plants that do not attract them, such as garlic or marigolds, or physically blocking access, such as with fences and screens.
When pests already are present, strategies focus on suppressing their numbers or damaging effects to an acceptable level. Suppression of pests usually requires some kind of monitoring and scouting to detect them, as well as timely application of control measures when their populations are low. This can involve a variety of physical and chemical techniques.
For example, sprayed water or copper sulfate can kill or injure some pests such as fleas and caterpillars. Biological controls such as the use of natural enemies, such as parasites and predators, are a common way to control pests in landscape plantings and garden beds. These are often combined with other controls, such as cultural practices and the use of trap crops that lure pests to where they can be killed or trapped.
Some pests are continuous, such as cockroaches and termites; others are sporadic or migratory, such as rodents, birds, or weeds. Some pests cause significant health and safety risks, such as the diseases carried by some insects or the contamination of food by worms and other fungi. These can require regulatory control.
Other pests may be a nuisance but are not dangerous and do not threaten people’s health or the environment. These include weeds, birds, hummingbirds, and even some ants. These are often considered pests because they interfere with recreational activities, such as birdwatching or gardening. The threshold for when these become a pest depends on the activity and the impact. For instance, a few wasps in the backyard probably do not warrant action, but hundreds swarming over a home or hospital operating room would.
Eradication
The goal of pest control is to eradicate infestations, not just kill individual pests. The word eradication has several meanings: Exterminate means to instantly destroy and wipe out. Eradicate means to drive out or remove from a place, uproot, as in the way one might yank an undesirable weed up by the roots. It can also mean to remove a disease from the world by eliminating the pathogen that causes it, such as with smallpox or rinderpest. Finally, eradication can mean to reduce the prevalence of a disease to zero worldwide, as with polio or bubonic plague.
Pests are not just annoying; they can contaminate food, damage homes and make asthma or allergies worse. They can even carry diseases that can be fatal, such as malaria, typhoid fever, diphtheria, cholera and tuberculosis.
Various methods can be used to combat pests, from trapping and baiting them to spraying them with chemicals. Pesticides often contain toxic substances that can be harmful to children, pets, and adults. Therefore, it is important to use them only as directed by a pest control professional.
A good way to prevent pests is to declutter your home. Get rid of unused toys, cardboard boxes, torn trash bags, and other relics that attract vermin. Also, regularly throw away garbage and don’t leave rotting food out for long periods of time. Roaches and ants love spoiled food, and cockroaches are attracted to rotting vegetables.
Other methods include ultra-low volume fogging, which uses a special machine to disperse a fine mist of chemical pesticides over an entire building. Fumigation is a more extreme chemical method that involves sealing a building and filling it with poisonous gas to completely annihilate all pests inside.
Using pesticides safely requires cooperation from all parties: residents, building managers, and maintenance workers. Residents should keep living areas clean and report any maintenance problems to the building manager or owner. In addition, they should read the pesticide label carefully before using it. It usually contains detailed instructions and warnings as well as potential hazards. It’s also a good idea to use only those pesticides approved for indoor pest control.
IPM
IPM is an ecologically based approach to pest control that focuses on long-term prevention of pests or their damage. It uses a wide range of nonchemical methods, including biological control, habitat manipulation, modification of cultural practices, and the use of resistant varieties. It also includes monitoring and record keeping, and the use of pesticides when needed. Pesticides are always used as a last resort and in the most selective manner to minimize risks to people, beneficial insects, and the environment.
IPM programs start by evaluating each pest infestation to determine whether management action is needed. This evaluation takes into account the life cycle of the pest, potential damage, natural enemies, and weather conditions. IPM systems also set “action thresholds,” which are the levels at which pest populations or environmental conditions indicate that management action is required. Sighting a single pest does not necessarily indicate that the pest population is above an action threshold; instead, the threshold must be considered in terms of the potential economic threat posed by the pest.
UC IPM practices are designed to prevent unacceptable pest damage using strategies that include biological, cultural, physical, and mechanical controls, and educational tactics. They focus on reducing the availability of food, water, and shelter for pests and removing the attraction to them by modifying the landscape to reduce the attractiveness of the crop or garden. They also utilize a variety of least toxic chemical control options, including pheromones, fungicides, and insect growth regulators.
The goal of IPM is to create a healthy, productive, and beautiful garden or landscape that is resilient against pests without the need for harmful chemicals. For example, planting native and drought-tolerant species will help minimize the need for irrigation and chemical fertilizers. Similarly, mulching with organic materials will provide nutrients to the soil and help suppress weeds. IPM strategies are especially important in schools, where children spend a large portion of their lives and may be exposed to diseases carried by biting insects and respiratory attacks caused by rodent and cockroach infestations as well as unnecessarily harsh pesticides.
For more information on integrating IPM into your home landscape, visit the UC IPM website, which has a wealth of free and for purchase publications on over 65 crops.