Pest management involves regulating organisms that negatively impact human activities or the environment. Control methods include prevention, suppression, and eradication. Contact Armis Pest Management now!

Eliminate food, water, and shelter for pests by regularly removing garbage, keeping work areas clean, and caulking cracks: plant species that attract natural predators, parasitoids, and disease organisms.

Chemical controls kill or repel a pest by attacking its body parts, disrupting its hormones, or blocking its senses.

Prevention

Prevention is a key component of pest management. Preventive practices are economic and environmentally responsible and include regularly cleaning areas where pests live and preventing them from spreading to new areas.

These practices can be natural, biological, chemical, or physical/mechanical. Natural controls (weather or topography) limit pest populations; biological control agents, such as predators and parasites, injure or kill target organisms to manage their numbers; cultural controls, such as changing irrigation practices to reduce root disease and weed problems, or encouraging natural predators of insects; and physical/mechanical controls, including barriers that prevent pests from reaching desirable plants; or traps, lures, or pheromones that attract and then poison or repel pests.

The best way to prevent damage from pests is to plant adapted, well-suited plants in the right place and make sure they receive adequate water and nutrients. Regularly inspecting your yard and garden for pests and assessing the amount of damage they are doing to desirable plants is also essential. Inspecting a pest for the first time means correctly identifying it and its host plant. If you find a pest, it is important to start with cultural changes and treatments that do not require toxic chemicals.

Once a pest is established, it may be necessary to use suppression methods to control its population and prevent the emergence of new generations. Suppression methods are typically less expensive and less risky to the environment than preventive measures.

Eradication is usually not possible in outdoor settings, but it may be an option for enclosed spaces, such as greenhouses and food processing or storage facilities.

When making decisions about pest control, keep in mind that a healthy urban ecosystem contains many species; controlling just one can lead to major disruptions. A good goal is to determine a threshold level for pests, above which further action would not be cost-justified. This should be based on the extent of the pest’s damage, the impact on the environment, and other factors. A healthy system is more resilient to stress and will recover from most pest infestations. Avoid overly aggressive pest control, which can lead to imbalances and serious harm to the ecosystem.

Suppression

Suppression is an important goal in many pest situations. It means reducing the number of pests to a level that does not cause unacceptable damage. Suppression is often part of a preventive program that includes prevention and control methods such as physical, cultural, biological or chemical controls. It is especially important to avoid overuse of pesticides because this can lead to resistant pests.

Once the threshold for a pest has been determined, the next step is to use a combination of prevention and suppression techniques to keep the population below the tolerance level. For example, removing sources of food, water and shelter can help prevent some pests. This can include storing foods in sealed containers and regularly removing garbage; repairing leaky plumbing; and eliminating hiding places.

Encouragement of natural enemies can also help reduce pest populations. These are predators, parasites, or pathogens that kill or control pests. In a garden, this may be accomplished by planting flowers that attract insect predators, such as asters (Aster spp), or fruiting shrubs that attract bird predators, such as serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis).

Other types of cultural practices are designed to disrupt pests’ life cycles or discourage their persistence. These may include intercropping crops to make it more difficult for pests to find a host; using varieties that are not as attractive to pests; and delaying crop plantings until after potential pests have emerged and died off for the season.

Biological control involves releasing natural enemies into an area to kill or control unwanted pests. This can be done by introducing new enemies to an area or releasing more of a species that is already present as a natural enemy. The degree of control achieved by these methods can vary and does not usually result in eradication.

Chemical control uses synthetic or organic substances to kill or suppress pests. Some chemicals are more toxic than others, and the amount of harm caused by a chemical depends on how it is used. Some types of chemicals can have long-term harmful effects on the environment and human health. This is why the NIH supports and promotes integrated pest management (IPM), an approach to pest management that includes prevention, suppression and control by using multiple approaches.

Eradication

Pests are organisms that cause economic or environmental damage to crops or other plants. They can be insects, plant diseases or weeds. Pest control involves intervention by any of several means to reduce or eliminate them. Control strategies are generally grouped into chemical, biological, cultural and physical/mechanical methods. The goal of pest management is to reduce pest numbers to an acceptable level. Pest eradication is rarely the objective because of the difficulty of the task. Continuous pests are those organisms that require regular control; sporadic pests are those that are not continuous but are migratory or cyclical in nature and need periodic control; potential pests are those that do not pose significant economic threat but may become pests in certain conditions.

Chemical control is generally considered the last resort in the management of pests. The types of chemicals used include herbicides to kill weeds, insecticides to kill insects and fungicides to kill plant pathogens. Chemicals are applied in a variety of ways such as spraying, dusting and drenching. The proper timing of a pesticide application is crucial to its effectiveness. If the application is too early or too late, it will not be effective. Moreover, an overuse of pesticides can result in the development of resistant organisms.

Biological management uses the pest’s natural enemies, such as predators, parasitoids and pathogens, to control the population. This is often a more cost-effective method of controlling a pest, but it can also be more risky than other management techniques. For example, introducing the sterile male of a pest species into an ecosystem to induce increased mortality rates has the potential to disrupt the genetic balance in the species.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an increasingly popular approach to managing pests, especially in agriculture. IPM includes a combination of all the above-mentioned control methods and prioritizes the use of non-chemical pesticides, with the least toxic pesticides used as a first choice.

Monitoring

A pest control program must monitor the pest population and determine if action is needed. This can be done through inspections and scouting (searching for, identifying and assessing) of insect, insect-like, mollusk and vertebrate pests; weeds; and plant pathogens. Monitoring may also include checking environmental conditions in the area that is being managed. For example, examining the temperature and moisture levels of soil or plants can help to predict when the pests are most likely to be active and reach damaging populations.

If the pest numbers rise to unacceptable levels, a decision must be made whether to begin control. This must take into account the value of the crop, the extent to which the damage is being caused and the cost of control. Generally, only severe or widespread damage to crops, plants and natural areas justify the use of chemical controls.

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies focus on prevention and suppression of pests using the least toxic means possible. IPM practices are often more effective and safer for humans and the environment than traditional methods of controlling pests.

In IPM, preventive control measures are put into place before pests become a problem. These might include changing the way an area is used, such as restricting access to it or modifying the design of facilities to make them more resistant to pests. Physical or mechanical controls can also be used, such as screens, floating row covers, or food containers with tight-fitting lids that block pests from reaching the contents. These controls are sometimes augmented with biological or chemical control methods, especially when preventive measures fail to work or pose unreasonable risks to human health or the environment.

The IPM process involves a careful evaluation of the potential risks from pests and their control methods to ensure that they are both safe for people and the environment. It may include establishing thresholds above which enhanced control methods are applied, if the damage to the environment or humans is unacceptable.

NIH’s pest management programs are supported by technical oversight that provides an objective evaluation of the activities, effectiveness and costs of the IPM program. This service is provided by the Pest Management Policy Committee, which includes staff members from the NIH Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, Center for the Advancement of Biomedical Research, Office of Environmental Health and Safety, and Veterinary Services. The committee also serves as a liaison with extramural researchers, federal agencies, universities and private organizations on integrated pest management issues.