Step 4 – Be proactive

If there are flies in your area, don’t wait – act now! Using your knowledge of the landscape (step 2) and knowledge obtained from monitoring (step 3), you can target key areas and quickly. Concentrated efforts in parts of the landscape that are at risk to first emergence (which you have identified by monitoring) will put the remaining landscapes in a better position. Make sure that everyone is aware of seasonal patterns (based on monitoring) and acts together to match treatments to specific times (for example, by everyone catching spring emergence).

Our research has shown that coordinated efforts to reduce the number of female flies in the early spring population can greatly reduce fly numbers over the season. Focusing efforts on reducing the number of females in early spring and on monitoring areas with a high potential for harbouring source populations of flies can have a huge impact on the control of populations over the whole season.