Pest Control Boise prevents or eliminates unwanted organisms from damaging crops, livestock, and human health. It involves a range of physical, biological, and chemical methods.

Physical control includes barriers, fences, traps, and the elimination of nests. Oils can also be used, coating the insects in a suffocating sheen.

Pests can introduce disease, cause property damage, and disrupt normal operations. They can also contaminate food and carry allergens that affect human health. Controlling pests before they become a problem reduces costs and enhances quality while preserving property and improving safety for building occupants and the general public.

Prevention methods include sanitation practices, pest-proofing, and building maintenance. Sanitation helps control and suppress pest populations by removing their food, water and shelter. This can be accomplished by properly cleaning facilities and equipment, removing weeds and debris from buildings, storing food in containers with tight lids, putting trash in receptacles with tight-fitting covers and sealing entry points and other hiding places for pests.

Physical pest control measures include blocking, trapping and poisoning. Blocking involves removing possible sources of entry, such as by caulking cracks and crevices and blocking holes. Traps are effective for catching pests such as mice and rodents, but they must be regularly checked and any trapped pests removed. Placing bait stations containing poisons is another method of controlling pests, but the bait must be monitored and any poisoned pests removed.

The use of natural enemies to control pests is one of the most economical and environmentally responsible methods of pest control. These organisms, such as birds, insects and nematodes, feed on or parasitize some of the pests and can help control their populations. The process of using natural enemies to control pests is time consuming and requires careful selection of the enemy species and timing of release.

Other physical pest control techniques include keeping food in tightly closed containers, storing supplies in secure boxes and paying attention to garbage pickup and disposal schedules. Maintaining a regular landscaping schedule can also limit pest habitats and food sources.

In addition to these physical pest control measures, pest management programs should involve clients from the c-suite to the loading dock in order to achieve success. This includes establishing a protocol for inspecting incoming shipments for pests and providing training for staff on cleaning techniques that do not invite pests in and reporting building maintenance issues to the appropriate people.

Suppression

Pest control includes strategies to reduce a pest population to below an acceptable level. The goal is to prevent the pest from building up again at a level that causes unacceptable harm, or to eradicate it completely. This is often a joint goal with prevention, as reducing the number of pests in the environment usually also reduces their damage.

A wide variety of strategies are used to reduce pest populations, including the use of natural predators, parasites, and pathogens. These organisms attack and kill or infect the pests, thereby controlling their numbers. These methods are called biological controls.

Physical devices or other methods that physically trap or alter the environment of a pest are known as mechanical controls. These include screens, barriers, fences, and nets. Other devices or machines that can affect the environmental conditions of a pest, such as radiation and heat, are also mechanical controls. Chemicals used to kill or control pests are known as pesticides, and they are the most commonly used controls. They are applied to crops and soils to protect them from pests, and they are widely used in household applications to control cockroaches, termites, mosquitoes, weeds, fungi, and other unwanted organisms.

Some pests require close monitoring to determine when control actions are needed. This can be done by scouting or by trapping, as with insect, insect-like, and mollusk pests, or by visual inspection in the case of microbial or vertebrate pests. Monitoring may also involve observing environmental conditions, such as temperature and moisture levels, which influence pest activity.

Some pests are deemed to be of such a high risk to public health that they cannot be tolerated at any level, and therefore need to be controlled immediately. Such pests can be bacteria such as those that cause food poisoning, or cockroaches and mice, which contaminate indoor spaces and irritate the respiratory systems of people with asthma and allergies. The latter also contribute to poor air quality and, as a result, affect the health of children and adults. In these cases, a zero tolerance policy is often adopted and pest control measures are taken immediately.

Eradication

The eradication of pests is a difficult goal to achieve. It requires that control efforts be implemented at the local, national and international levels, and that they succeed on several fronts. This is particularly true of biological eradication, where populations of natural enemies are deliberately increased to reduce the population of an unwanted pest. This is generally more difficult than introducing predators or parasitoids to control existing pest populations, and it often takes longer.

Unlike the other three methods of pest control, eradication attempts to remove an entire species of plant or animal from an area rather than controlling it at a local level. This method is rarely used, but it may be appropriate in some cases. For example, invasive foreign plants may overrun agricultural land and damage the economy, or they may infest forests, wetlands and estuaries and degrade wildlife habitat. In such instances, eradication can be a useful and cost-effective strategy.

To eradicate a pest, it is necessary to understand its life cycle and how it affects human activities. Once this is known, strategies for control can be formulated and executed. Pests can be controlled using tolerance, deterrence and eradication, but the most effective approach is usually to use integrated pest management, which uses all of these tools in tandem.

It is also important to accurately identify the pest at hand. This can be done by consulting a professional. A commodity or industry organization, Cooperative Extension agent or State land grant university are all good sources of assistance.

Chemical pesticides are the most common means of controlling pests. These chemicals can destroy pests or prevent them from doing harm, and they are available in a wide variety of forms. Some attract, repel or kill pests, while others regulate growth or suppress germination. Many pesticides are toxic to natural enemies as well, so it is important to structure applications of these substances so that they exploit complementarities between beneficial organisms and the target pest.

Biological pesticides are more benign than traditional chemicals. These work by introducing the genetic material of a desired organism into a host species. For example, a strain of bacteria that produces a toxin that targets and destroys the cell walls of an insect pest can be introduced into a field of corn. Other biological pest control agents include plant pathogens and nematodes, which can be released in the soil to target the pests that would otherwise consume or displace them.

Natural Forces

Natural forces include predators, parasites, disease organisms and competitors that control pest populations. In addition, weather conditions like temperature, day length and moisture affect pest growth, activity and reproduction.

Often, nature provides the best solution to pest problems. However, some natural enemies are not abundant enough or present in the right place at the right time to provide effective control. Pest management professionals consider all of these factors when choosing methods to control pests. They also consider what impact the method they choose will have on other organisms in and around the treatment site, as well as the environment.

Physical pest control includes trapping, killing or removing pests, as well as putting up barriers to prevent their entry. Threshold-based decision making involves scouting and monitoring pest numbers to determine when action is needed. For example, seeing a few wasps on a sunny day may not warrant any intervention, but noticing a growing population every day is a good reason to take action.

Chemicals are a last resort, and they should be used only when all other methods have been exhausted. The goal is to use the least-toxic method possible that will still be effective. This type of control is referred to as integrated pest management (IPM) or ecosystem-based pest management. IPM techniques are based on preventing pest damage through a combination of biological, environmental and cultural controls. This approach is often less costly than using chemical pesticides, and it is safer for the environment, beneficial insects and plants, and people.

Biological control uses organisms that are not harmful to humans, plants or other animals to reduce pest damage. Biological methods include planting crops that attract natural enemies, such as the herb fern-leaf yarrow (Achillea filipendulina). These plants can be planted in flower or vegetable gardens, and they will help to suppress weeds, insect pests and nematodes.

Another technique of biological control is augmentation, which increases the number or the range of natural enemies to reduce pest populations. This can be accomplished through mass production and periodic releases, or inundative releases of natural enemies. Improvements in rearing and releasing techniques, as well as genetic enhancement of natural enemies, are continually improving the augmentation process.