Time to declare war on the mosquitoes.
And now we have a battle plan.
There is a lot to love about summertime in Vermont.
Daylight that stretches past 9 p.m. Weeklong stints of sunny, warm days and crisp, cool evenings. Lazy weekend afternoons, reading in the hammock or swimming in a local pond or stream. Evenings communing at the creemee stand or lounging on a picnic blanket, listening to the Vermont Symphony Orchestra.
You want to embrace it all, hold it tight, and squirrel away some of that positive energy for those gray early winter days, when it gets dark at 4 p.m. Embrace everything, that is, except another Vermont summer specialty, at least around these parts: the mosquito. Those you want to squash. Repeatedly.
Mosquitoes have gotten so bad in areas of the Champlain Valley that the state has instituted a couple of mosquito control districts—the BLSG district that encompasses Brandon, Leicester, Salisbury, and Goshen; and the Lemon Fair district, which consists of Bridport and Cornwall. To date, both districts have used a strain of Bacillus thuringiensis, an insecticidal bacterium, that targets mosquito larvae; BLSG also uses pyrethroids, a synthetic pesticide, on adult mosquitoes.
Results have been mixed. Certainly, the mosquito population in the two districts has lessened due to the controls, but are the efforts of the two districts as comprehensive and effective as they can be? And how to move forward?
These were among the many mosquito-control issues discussed in a darkened, cool Bi Hall classroom in May during the colloquium presentations for the environmental studies senior seminar. Each fall and spring, senior ES majors participate in a service-learning project that involves readings, discussions, and collaborative research on a local or regional environmental issue. This spring, the students focused on local pest-control issues and alternatives (relating not only to mosquitoes but farming as well), and at the colloquium they presented both their findings and potential solutions.
For instance, the students penned a Vermont Farmer’s Guide to Finding, Writing, and Applying for Grants, and they compiled fact sheets for local farmers touting organic alternatives to pesticides in conventional farming, both of which were really interesting. But I wanted to hear about plans for the mosquitoes.
With the poise of a seasoned professional, Rebecca Cushing ’06 outlined the work of the Mosquito Control Group, which included aerial photos of both districts, ground surveys of the Lemon Fair district, and GPS mapping of select breeding grounds. The fieldwork, in turn, informed a series of fact sheets that outlined mosquito habitat and life-cycle analysis; proposed alternative, nonsynthetic methods of control; and recommended household control strategies that could impact the wider districts.
“This is a great service to the community,” declared Tom Vanacore, the self-described “bug guy from Lemon Fair,” at the conclusion of the presentation. “We have a lot of work ahead of us, but this is a great start, the perfect foundation.”
So here’s hoping for future summers of bug-free evenings, when it’s still light after 9 p.m., and a crowd is forming at the local creemee stand. — Matt Jennings