Integrated Pest Management
Integrated pest management (IPM) is a pest control strategy that uses a variety of complementary strategies including: mechanical devices, physical devices, genetic, biological, cultural management, and chemical management. These methods are done in three stages: prevention, observation, and intervention. It is an ecological approach with a main goal of significantly reducing the use of pesticides while at the same time managing pest populations.
How IPM works
- Mechanical controls: Should a pest reach an unacceptable level, mechanical methods are the first options to consider. They include erecting insect barriers, using traps, vacuuming, and tillage to disrupt breeding.
- Biological controls: Natural biological processes and materials can provide control, with minimal environmental impact, and often at low cost. The main focus here is on promoting beneficial insects that eat target pests. Biological insecticides, derived from natural pest enemies (i.e. ladybugs, nematodes), also fit in this category.
- Chemical controls: Synthetic pesticides are generally only used as required and often only at specific times in a pests life cycle. Many of the newer pesticide groups are derived from plants or naturally occurring substances (e.g.: nicotine, pyrethrum and insect growth regulators), and further 'biology-based' or 'ecological' techniques are under evaluation.
- Acceptable levels: The emphasis is on control. IPM holds that wiping out an entire pest population is often impossible, and the attempt can be more costly, environmentally unsafe, and frequently unachievable. IPM programs first work to establish acceptable pest levels, called thresholds, and apply controls if those thresholds are crossed. These thresholds are pest and site specific, meaning that it may be acceptable at one site to have a weed such as white clover, but at another site it may not be acceptable. This stops the pest gaining resistance to chemicals produced by the plant or applied to the crops. If many of the pests are killed then any that have resistance to the chemical will rapidly reproduce forming a resistant population. By not killing all the pests there are some un-resistant pests left that will dilute any resistant genes that appear.
- Preventive cultural practices: Selecting varieties best for local growing conditions, and maintaining healthy crops, is the first line of defense, together with plant quarantine and 'cultural techniques' such as crop sanitation (e.g. removal of diseased plants to prevent spread of infection).
- Monitor and evaluate results: Regular observation is the cornerstone of IPM. Observation is broken into two steps, first; inspection and second; identification. Visual inspection, insect traps, and other measurement methods and monitoring tools are used to monitor pest levels. Accurate pest identification is critical to a successful IPM program. Record-keeping is essential, as is a thorough knowledge of the behavior and reproductive cycles of target pests. Since insects are cold-blooded, their physical development is dependent on the temperature of their environment. Many insects have had their development cycles modeled in terms of degree days. Monitor the degree days of an environment to determine when is the optimal time for a specific insect's outbreak. Evaluate results - How did it work? Evaluation is often one of the most important steps. This is the process to review an IPM program and the results it generated.
You can read more about us and about our company history. See why you should choose Cowley's. We offer customers help with residential pest control, commercial pest control, residential termite management, and offer other additional services. We help customers exterminate bed bugs, termites, wood destroying insects, beetles, carpenter bees, ants, rodents, ticks, stinkbugs, and offer bird control and nuisance wildlife services.
