Meet a Master at Going After Insect Pests the Natural Way

Kenuel Ogwaro started early as an exterminator. At the age of 4, he was given his own termite mound near his village in Uganda and expected to protect it and to harvest it for vital foodstuffs for his family.

His termite catch was boiled or dried to produce a dish that tasted like a mix of sour cream and peanut butter.

There were snakes and scorpions just as interested in Ogwaro’s termite mound for a hearty meal as he was. Ogwaro’s termite traps--deep holes lined with slippery banana leaves to keep the termites from escaping--attracted frogs interested in a termite feast. And frogs attracted snakes, which dined on frogs. And just out of sight awaiting their chance to feed upon the youngsters themselves were lions, hyenas and other carnivores.

“It was very, very dangerous growing up. When I was young, I was part of the food chain,” Ogwaro said, describing the dangers that decimated the children of his village. “There were biting ants, and the people of the village were poor and did not have pants. We were bitten in very sensitive places.”

Mosquitoes were a more serious threat to Ogwaro and his young counterparts. With mosquitoes comes malaria, he explained, “and many of us died. I was near to death several times.”

Ogwaro is still killing termites, though not to eat them. Despite his early experiences, or perhaps because of them, the former African child, now a resident of Rancho Penasquitos, has become a pioneer in the exterminating business, using the knowledge of predator and prey he began learning as a child to control pests by balancing nature rather than using chemical pesticides.

Entomologists applaud Ogwaro’s methods and call them the coming thing in pest control.

“There are a few other firms today who are going in the same direction,” said Michael Rust, urban entomologist at UC Riverside. “But it is a growing trend. I would say that in a few years from now, five or 10 years, there will be many others in this field following the same general direction.”

Ogwaro’s early and informal studies of insects led him to obtain a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Nairobi, Kenya.

But when he left the academic realm and began to apply his knowledge, Ogwaro realized his educational theories and the real world did not mix.

He had learned and had been taught that natural methods should be used to obtain a balance in nature, but chemicals reigned supreme in the pest control business and research in the field of entomology was aimed at finding new, more deadly and longer-lasting pesticides.

Ogwaro’s interests lay in the biological control of insects, the use of parasites and predators to control exploding populations of pests, manipulating the environment to accommodate the needs of all living creatures.

With chemical companies funding most of the research and awarding grants to most of the universities, Ogwaro found himself on the outside, unwanted despite his years of study and wealth of expertise.

For more than a decade, Ogwaro worked in pure research at the International Center for Insect Physiology and Ecology in Kenya, concentrating on insect behavior and the relationships between insects and their host plants. Then he struck out for the United States, where he hoped to find a position teaching his environmentally oriented brand of pest control, called integrated pest management.

Ogwaro investigates the factors causing the pest infestation, modifies the environment to control the problem, then monitors the situation to keep the problem in check.

After an unsuccessful attempt to obtain a teaching position at UC Davis, he decided to go into private practice. Ogwaro, now 47, settled finally in Rancho Penasquitos, started his own firm--Eco-Care--in 1987 and began recruiting San Diegans to his theories of controlling ant, gopher, rat, roach and other pest problems.

Affluent Rancho Santa Fe residents are among his best customers, he said, and have spread the word about Eco-Care. In recent months, De Anza Group has joined his client list, adding the Mission Bay Golf Course, De Anza Mobile Home Park and Campland to his purview.

“Most people are happy with my methods because they don’t like the idea of spraying chemicals in their homes,” Ogwaro said. “But then there are others, like the lady who told me that she had the man come in every month and spray. When I asked her what the man was spraying for, she said: ‘Everything.’ She was so proud, and what could I say to her, that she was doing a bad thing? No, I could not.”

Mary Cowley, a Rancho Santa Fe resident, is sold on Ogwaro’s methods. He has been keeping her house and yard free of pests, four-footed and six-legged kinds, for more than two years now and she’s “very pleased.

“I heard of him through my dog-groomer and I’ve passed the word about him to my friends,” Cowley said. “I used to have one of those big companies come in and spray, but I’m very much against pesticides. (Ogwaro) only uses poisons as a last resort.”

Ogwaro pops in periodically at the Cowley estate and checks out the balance of nature. Then, if the Cowleys have a special problem, ants or a mouse or gophers in the lawn, she calls him.

“He’s very responsive,” she said. “He comes in a day or two and takes care of it.”

For the first time this year, Ogwaro has taken charge of the Cowleys small orchard. “He introduced some insect or other to eat up the aphids and it seems to be working very well,” Cowley said.

Ogwaro tackles an ant infestation like a detective, seeking to find the source of the infestation, the point where the pests enter the home and the bait that is luring them out of their natural outside environment.

Sometimes his job is as simple as plugging cracks in the baseboard or caulking around windows to keep the interlopers out. Sometimes, it requires the introduction of parasites or insect diseases to control the ant population. As a last resort, he will spray, using pyrethrins--insecticides produced from flowers that lose their toxicity within minutes of application.

He also traps snakes, relocating the friendlier ones where they can maintain the balance of nature without interfering in back-yard barbecues. He draws the line on rattlesnakes, however. “They are nasty creatures,” Ogwaro said, “and I kill them.”

The entomologist uses his lore of nature’s remedies to remove grub worms from golf courses and roaches from restaurants. He blames careless plumbers for making roaches almost immune to efforts to evict them.

Ogwaro also has a thriving clientele for his gopher-removal service and admits to using traps to rid the homeowner of his burrowing interlopers. He is considering the use of traps that will leave the gopher unharmed, but has yet to find a place where live gophers could be transplanted without cries of outrage from the humans who reside nearby.

He frowns on use of poisoned grain in exterminating gophers, saying gophers are canny animals that often push the poisoned grain out of their burrows, leaving it exposed for birds and other more trusting creatures to consume.

Plumbers “make such big holes for pipes that roaches can get back into places where it is almost impossible to reach them, even with chemicals,” Ogwaro explained. He usually solves the problem by closing up the crawl spaces and sealing up the cracks so the the insects have no place to hide.

Ogwaro can walk in a house and, within minutes, trace the pest to its lair because he knows what insects eat and where they lay their eggs. Eradicate their eating-breeding sources and the problem goes away, Ogwaro contends.

The entomologist shakes his head at American buying habits, pointing to coupon-clipping and bulk buying as causes for insect infestations in many pantries. His wife, a devoted coupon clipper, ignores him.

“Don’t buy anything that you won’t use up in three months or less,” he counsels. “If you keep things around longer, you forget you have bought them and they become a place for insects and other pests to breed and feed.” Anyone who has found weevils in their corn-bread mix would nod in assent.

Ogwaro has been lecturing at homeowners’ associations, preaching his policy of natural controls to maintain the balance of nature and showing homeowners how to do it themselves.

“Most measures to control pests are simple ones, like proper sanitation measures,” Ogwaro explained. “People can do it for themselves or they can hire me to do it for them.”

One prerequisite for Ogwaro’s clients is patience. It takes time to strike a balance of nature that keeps ants outside the house and aphids out of the garden.

“It takes two to five years to control a problem completely,” Ogwaro admits, but hastily adds that the control, with proper monitoring, remains effective--while chemical sprays must be reapplied every seven months.

Patricia Cawthon, a San Diego County vector control supervisor, has never met Ken Owgaro but she wholeheartedly approves of his methods and his efforts to maintain a balance of natural forces.

“We would all like to live in a chemical-free world,” Cawthon said. “It is our department’s goal.”

Whether that is a practical solution to all cases of disease and infestation, she is not so sure.

Ogwaro can discourage pests by blocking the entry points and by removing the food and water sources they seek, but can he reeducate the entire population, from producer to consumer? Insects can infest food products at any place from the farm to the consumer’s cupboard, Cawthon pointed out, and once the pests are in residence, “it’s a devil of a job to get them out.”

County vector controllers deal mainly with pests that carry diseases transmittable to humans, such as rats and mosquitoes, and usually use the most expeditious methods to attack them, including poisons and chemical sprays.

“There are only eight of us in the department to cover the entire county and nearly 2.5 million people,” Cawthon said, “but we are trying to get the word out about proper storage and sanitation practices, educating homeowners’ associations, contacting Neighborhood Watch groups.

“And we can use all the help we can get. It sounds like Ken Ogwaro is giving us a lot of help.”

Herb Field, entomologist and vice president of Lloyd Pest Control, does not quarrel with Ogwaro’s contention that less is better when it comes to chemicals, but he does frown on Ogwaro’s contention that pest control companies are poisoning more than the pests they are sent after.

Thermal termite eradication, a non-chemical heat treatment, is Lloyd’s answer to environmentally sensitive termite control, Field said, and other companies use freezing or low-voltage electrical applications to treat exposed termite nests.

Pest control companies also endorse preventive work to control roof rats--a Southern California scourge--by trimming thick overhanging trees, screening attic openings and removing popular rat habitats such as wood piles and food sources, Field said.

Yes, Field admits, he has used pesticides on the job and in his own home, “but I don’t go in and spray everything from top to bottom. I spray a specific spot. I’ve got three kids and I don’t want to endanger them or anyone else.”

Ogwaro, who said that in one year he was hired and fired by 11 pest control companies for his heretical methods, admits that Field’s chemical methods are simpler and quicker.

“A lot of people want someone to come in and get rid of their problem quickly and then leave so they can get on with what they were doing. These people do not want me,” Ogwaro said.

He will keep to his ways, recommending natural control methods and live mouse traps, he said, because “all living things can live together on this earth in harmony. My goal is to help that happen.”