Pest Management in Ecological Perspective

Abstract

Pest management is concerned with the suppression of pests and with the alleviation of pest problems. The concept of a “pest” has meaning only in a human context: a pest is an organism that man regards as harmful to his person, property, or environment. As Rudd (1971) has observed, the word “pest” (like the word “weed”) is defined only according to its impact, direct or indirect, upon man, often in environments that man himself has modified considerably. Man makes an organism a pest as soon as he requires something it needs and which he is not prepared to share with it; and he frequently makes it a “worse” pest by manufacturing an environment that favors its increase and survival. Since pests, by definition, are competitors for resources that man wishes to preempt for his own use, the more resources he tries to preempt, the more pests he will encounter. Thus a study of pest management in ecological perspective must take account of the activities of man—the species that creates and aggravates pest problems and that devises treatment designed to alleviate them.

The Parable of the Beans and the Bean-Eaters Suppose you try to make a very simple system—a field, for example, in which you have killed everything in order to grow just one kind of living thing, say beans.… You will find that all sorts of plants and animals—mainly fungi and insects—try to come (to) eat your beans. M. Strong (1973)