Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
6
Pest management
Mosquitoes are pests because they carry diseases or because their bites itch, weeds because they reduce farm
productivity or spoil our gardens, rats because they feast on stored food or frighten the kids. Pests can carry
economic, health, environmental and even aesthetic costs. People want rid of them all.
Chapter contents
6.1 Introduction
140
6.1.1 One person's pest, another person's pet
140
6.1.2 Eradication or control?
141
6.2 Chemical pesticides
146
6.2.1 Natural arms factories
146
6.2.2 Take no prisoners
147
6.2.3 From blunderbuss to surgical strike
147
6.2.4 Cut off the enemy's reinforcements
150
6.2.5 Changing pest behavior - a propaganda war
150
6.2.6 When pesticides go wrong - target pest resurgence and secondary pests
151
6.2.7 Widespread effects of pesticides on nontarget organisms, including people
153
6.3 Biological control
154
6.3.1 Importation biological control - a question of scale
155
6.3.2 Conservation biological control - get natural enemies to do the work
156
6.3.3 Inoculation biological control - effective in glasshouses but rarely in fi eld crops
158
6.3.4 Inundation biological control - using fungi, viruses, bacteria and nematodes
159
6.3.5 When biological control goes wrong
160
6.4 Evolution of resistance and its management
162
6.5 Integrated pest management (IPM)
164
6.5.1 IPM against potato tuber moths in New Zealand
165
6.5.2 IPM against an invasive weed in Australia
166
Key concepts
In this chapter you will
recognize that a pest is simply a species that (some) humans consider undesirable - one person's
pest is another person's pet
note that the aim of pest control is often not eradication but maintenance at a level below which
further control is unjustifi ed
appreciate that the management of pests, as of endangered species, depends on a thorough under-
standing of population dynamics theory
139
Search WWH ::
Custom Search