Prevention

As a first line of pest control aim to avoid situations where the pest or disease may become a threat. Plan to prevent, minimize and avoid pest and disease problems. By far, the best way to protect your building is by integrating prevention techniquesinto your everyday practices. This is both a critical step and effective strategy whenit comes to avoiding pests. Routine cleaning is a must, but there are also somespecifics that can aid in deterring animals or insects. Here are some preventionmethods to practice at your facility :

• Remove any sources of food, water or shelter.
• Store items in safe and enclosed containers.
• Dispose of garbage regularly with a tightly closed lid.
• Reduce clutter or areas where pests can hide.
• Seal and close off any cracks or holes to eliminate outside entry.
• Perform routine cleaning and surveying from the roof to the basement floor.

Monitor & Identify Pests

Monitoring is the backbone of an IPM program. The purpose of monitoring is to supply recent, accurate information with which you can make appropriate decisions for managing pests in your school.

Monitoring is the regular and ongoing inspection of areas where pest problems do or might occur. Information gathered from these inspections is always written down. Monitoring helps determine where, when, and what kind of treatments are needed.

Set Action Thresholds

Before taking any pest control action, IPM first sets an action threshold, a point at which pest populations or environmental conditions indicate that pest control action must be taken. Sighting a single pest does not always mean control is needed. The level at which pests will either become an economic threat is critical to guide future pest control decisions. This is when a pest population and or / a disease reaches a certain level, or environmental conditions are such, that action should be taken to prevent economic loss.

Control

Once monitoring, identification, and action thresholds indicate that pest control is required, and preventive methods are no longer effective or available, IPM programs then evaluate the proper control method both for effectiveness and risk. Effective, less risky pest controls are chosen first, including highly targeted chemicals, such as pheromones to disrupt pest mating, or mechanical control, such as trapping or weeding. If further monitoring, identifications and action thresholds indicate that less risky controls are not working, then additional pest control methods would be employed, such as targeted spraying of pesticides. Broadcast spraying of non-specific pesticides is a last resort.