Pest Control Abbotsford BC protects people, animals, plants, and property from unwanted insects, rodents, and other pests. These pests can be carriers of diseases like Plague, Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome and Lassa Fever as well as cause allergies and asthma.
Determine what services you will offer your customers. This will depend on your location and the most prevalent pests in the area.
Prevention is the best way to manage pests and the problems they cause. It requires a commitment to maintain sanitary conditions, avoid attractants and block pest pathways. It also means implementing an ongoing program that includes regular inspections and monitoring for signs of pest activity. The goal is to stop pest infestations before they occur and prevent the need for aggressive treatments that could harm beneficial insects or cause environmental damage.
Physical traps, netting and decoys are some examples of preventive methods that can help control pests. These methods are less expensive than chemical solutions and are environmentally conscious. However, they must be frequently handled and may not be effective against some pests. Chemicals offer greater ease of use but are often more expensive than biological controls and can pose health and safety risks when they are used incorrectly or in excess. They are also more likely to create environmental hazards if they leach into water supplies, soil or air.
Maintaining sanitation and blocking pests’ access to food, water, or shelter reduces the likelihood of pest infestation. This includes keeping trash receptacles tightly sealed, cleaning regularly, and removing clutter. It also means regularly inspecting the facility and adjusting landscaping to limit pest pathways, such as trimming shrubs and trees.
A pest management team must be able to identify the specific type of pest infesting the facility and determine what life stages are present. This helps them choose the most effective control method, which is generally a biological or environmental technique. This information also helps them minimize the use of pesticides, which should always be applied according to the label’s instructions and warnings.
Many materials housed in museums are susceptible to deterioration by insects, rodents and fungi. Good site sanitation and maintenance decrease the former, while quarantine, inspection and controlled atmosphere fumigation of artifacts can reduce the latter. Prevention of these pests involves the five steps of IPM: Avoid, Block, Detect, Respond and Recover/Treat.
Plant and QA managers and upper management all want to avoid product recalls or having products rejected by customers because of a pest problem. A preventive pest control program can deliver these benefits while helping to keep the facility in compliance with FSMA regulations.
Suppression
The goal of pest control is to prevent damage to crops or landscape plants. Suppression tactics aim to reduce pest populations below damaging levels, using a variety of techniques including biological control, cultural practices, modification of environmental conditions and resistant varieties of ornamental plants or turfgrass. When necessary, chemical pest controls are used sparingly and with maximum consideration for human health, beneficial organisms, the environment and non-target plants.
Scouting, monitoring and identification of pests are the foundation of a successful integrated pest management (IPM) program. This includes identifying a pest species to the level of individual individuals, and keeping records on the presence and numbers of the pest over time and space. This information should be used to determine economic injury levels, control action thresholds and other operational guidelines.
Pheromones are a useful tool in monitoring pest population dynamics. For example, a manufactured copy of the pheromone that a female insect uses to attract males can be used to confuse them and prevent mating. This can significantly decrease pest numbers. Pheromones can also be used to disrupt the life cycle of pests. For example, releasing pheromones that mimic a host plant’s natural pheromones can keep invasive plants from reaching reproductive maturity and establishing new populations in the field.
Certain natural features can restrict the spread of some pests, such as mountains and bodies of water that limit their habitat range. Other physical features can also be used to control pests, such as fences and barriers that block them from entering a crop or garden. Mechanical and physical controls kill a pest directly or make its environment unsuitable for it to survive in, such as traps for rodents, steam sterilization of soil for disease prevention, harrowing, mulches and weed-choking devices.
Biological control is the use of natural enemies to reduce pest populations. These organisms may be predators, parasites or pathogens. Some examples include lacewings, lady beetles, ground beetles, rove beetles, parasitic wasps and nematodes. Biological control works best when the predator or parasite is specific to the target pest, and it is not killed by other chemicals, such as herbicides. The release of natural enemies is a complex process and should be coordinated with scouting and suppression tactics.
Eradication
The aim of eradication is to completely destroy a pest population. This is difficult, expensive and time-consuming. Eradication programmes often involve the use of high levels of pesticides. This creates environmental risk, and nontarget organisms may be affected. Many pesticides are also toxic to people and pets. Eradication is usually undertaken by government agencies, but can also be the responsibility of farmers or other private individuals.
Biological control of pests uses other organisms to reduce their numbers through predation, parasitism, competition, herbivory or other natural mechanisms. This approach can be an important part of integrated pest management systems, and can also help reduce the need for chemical controls.
Sanitation practices can prevent pests from gaining entry to buildings or re-invading areas where they have previously been controlled. These include improving cleanliness, removing pest harborage and increasing the frequency of garbage collection. It is also important to use clean seeds and plants, to remove crop residues from fields and to wash equipment and harvesting tools before moving them from one site to another.
In the case of structures such as buildings, museums and galleries, good surveying and cleaning can help to minimise damage. The removal of rotting timbers, the re-painting of walls and ceilings with appropriate paints, and regular monitoring can reduce the potential for pest problems. Changing light bulbs and using proper ventilation to reduce humidity levels can prevent the formation of moulds that attract pests. The removal of bird nests, dead rodents and other detritus can prevent the development of pest infestations.
Some pests are continuous and need frequent control; others are sporadic or cyclical, and need to be controlled on an occasional basis. Control strategies should be designed to avoid harming people, property or the environment and to limit the amount of pesticide used. The use of alternative methods such as pheromone traps and sterile insect release can be useful for controlling some pests.
An important consideration in developing pest control strategies is resistance. When a pest is exposed to the same pesticide over and over again, it has the opportunity to develop resistance. The use of different pesticides, or varying the application rate or frequency can help reduce the development of resistance.
Monitoring
Monitoring is the process of checking for pests, identifying them, and assessing their numbers and damage. This is done with tools like traps, pheromones, and beat sheet shakes. It also includes the use of software that makes it easier to collect, analyze, and report data. A good monitoring program is critical to the success of any pest control strategy.
The first step in monitoring is identification of the pests that could be causing problems. This is typically done by a scout or pest control technician. Once the pests are identified, it’s important to understand how and where they are occurring. Continuous pests are usually fairly predictable and will require regular monitoring. Sporadic and potential pests, on the other hand, may be more difficult to predict. For example, a stored-product moth infestation is often triggered by certain environmental conditions that are not present in other environments.
Once the pests have been identified, a threshold can be established for each type of pest. This is the level above which a pest control action will be taken to prevent unacceptable damage or injury. Monitoring data will help a grower decide if and when this threshold has been reached, and will also serve as a tool to evaluate the effectiveness of a treatment.
Thresholds are also used in the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) system. IPM uses prevention, avoidance, monitoring and suppression strategies to maintain pest populations below economically damaging levels without reliance on expensive and hazardous chemical controls.
For example, a grower might set an IPM threshold of one egg per square foot in green bean fields or a crop that requires seedlings to be grown in trays. The grower would then monitor these trays on a weekly basis, and when egg counts were above this threshold, the grower would treat.
Using a threshold allows a grower to avoid the use of chemicals that are unnecessary, and it also reduces the risk of resistance development by keeping the population below the threshold. Monitoring can be done on a daily or weekly basis depending on the crop, and it’s best to do it as close to real-time as possible so that action can be taken quickly to limit damage or injury.