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City steps up to stop skeeters

By: Staff Writer

Tuesday, May. 1, 2012 at 1:45 PM | Comments: 0

Mosquito control has started around the city of Brandon.

Spring showers are liquid gold to gardens and lawns, but all that water can also be responsible for kicking off skeeter season.

The city of Brandon says they're prepared, after kicking off their annual mosquito abatement program on April 30.

The annual program is a joint project between the city and Brandon University. Workers hope to keep mosquito numbers down by killing the insects in their larval stage, applying larvicide to bodies of water where they are hatching.

Over the course of the summer, two Brandon University students will work with city of Brandon Community Services staff to monitor a control area of more than 100 square miles around the city.

"We check for mosquito larval counts in a number of bodies of water and larvicide areas where needed, based on an average of 10 dip samples," said city of Brandon Director of Community Services Perry Roque. "We focus our program on larviciding and ensuring as best we can that few mosquitoes reach adulthood within the city of Brandon limits."

However, after the insects take to the air as adults, the city does allow for the possibility of spraying.

Guidelines adopted by Brandon City Council in June 2011 measure the factors that allow for the control spraying of adult mosquitoes and are combined into an 18-point scale.

"Sometimes, high rainfall amounts together with high temperatures and/or mosquito migration into the City from outside of the control area may result in a high mosquito population that becomes intolerable," Roque said. "When those situations arise and the associated factors within the Guideline document fall within the ‘High Range’, we would then consider spraying. Of course, if a public health emergency necessitates the need for adult control, we would set aside our guidelines and follow the advice of Manitoba Health."

Individuals who have medical issues and can produce a medical certificate can apply to the city of Brandon’s Department of Community Services to have a 30-metre buffer zone applied to their personal property.

However, such buffer zones do not apply in situations where adult control spraying is undertaken as the result of a provincial health order.

As always, private property owners can play a very important role in reducing the potential for adult mosquito populations on their property in a number of ways, including:

dumping out any containers of standing water;
draining any eavestroughing;
covering rain water collection containers;
filling in any low-lying areas;
treating problem areas with biological larvicide.

Residents and visitors to Brandon can also ease the annoyance of pest mosquitoes by using repellants, wearing light-coloured clothing, limiting your time outside between the hours between dusk and dawn and using screened-in areas.

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