What is Insect Pest Management?
To make life tolerable, insect pests must be managed. Humans have been battling insect pests for as long as we have shared Planet Earth. The first person that swatted and killed a pesky fly might be considered the grandfather of modern-day pest control! Since that day, humans have devised many methods of dealing with or managing insect pests.
Although physically removing or squashing a bug is the most obvious—and was likely the first—method used to control pests, cultural control methods were probably not far behind. This required humans to know something of the insect—where it came from, how it got here, and why it is found where it is—in order to implement ways to keep it out. Since then, biological and regulatory controls have been implemented and chemical controls have been developed to manage insect pest populations. We will discuss several of the most common methods of pest control, called control tactics. Although it is not possible to provide an example of all possible control tactics, we will present the major tactics and offer an example of how each might be used in pest management.
These consist of:
- Cultural Control
- Biological Control
- Alternative Control
- Chemical Control
- Mechanical Control
- Regulatory Control
Some insect problems might be managed by a single control tactic, but strict reliance upon a one control tactic—insecticides, for example—is almost never adequate. Instead, most problems require a combination of several carefully selected tactics, called a control strategy, for effective long-term management. Strategies, which involve multiple tactics used simultaneously, are the preferred way to manage insect pest populations.
A control strategy is a combination or one or more pest control tactics used together.
Even the use of chemical controls should be balanced with nonchemical approaches to maximize their effectiveness. Likewise, sanitation to remove pest harboring sites may be most effective when coupled with exclusion techniques to minimize the reintroduction of the pests. All strategies are most effective if the life history and biology of the pest are well understood.
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