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WHY USE PUBLIC RESOURCES TO CONTROL MOSQUITOES?


The answer to that question can be summed up in two words: Commerce and Disease. On the commerce side, over a million visitors per year vacation and do business in Savannah and its surrounding areas. Tourism generates big revenue. If the mosquito population is allowed to thrive, being a tourist in the area will probably not be much fun. Not only would all those flying insects make life annoyingly miserable, they could also endanger health. This brings us to that D-word—disease. Mosquitos can transmit many viruses and parasites. Eastern Equine Encephalitis, West Nile virus, malaria, and the recent disease du jour, Zika, are just a few of the illnesses they can carry. So protecting the public, livestock, and other animals is an important facet of CCMC’s mission.


How do they carry out that mission? There are three broad tasks that CCMC undertakes in battling mosquitoes: Surveillance, Prevention, and Eradication. Believe it or not, helicopters are used for all these tasks, as three MD 500 helicopters, one Air Tractor airplane, three pilots, three mechanics, and a variety of specialized equipment all combine to do battle.


SURVEILLANCE


During the surveillance phase, first the geographic area is broken into approximately 300 target sites where mosquitoes are known to hatch. The sizes of these breeding sites range from relatively small to as large as 5,000 acres. All sites combined are well over a million acres. Still, they all have one thing in common—water. The water may come from various sources, including rainfall, dredging, and tidal fluctuations, but wherever it comes from, the insects lay their eggs near it. Even mud makes for inviting mosquito motels. As the Savannah River is dredged to maintain shipping lanes, millions of yards of river-bottom muck is removed to large containment areas. As that mud dries and cracks, the water remaining in those cracks become a red-light breeding district for the fertile fliers.


As the surveillance stage continues, the three MD helicopters fly field personnel on reconnaissance missions to determine the size of the larvae population. These agents scoop up water samples and manually count individual larva. When a certain threshold is exceeded, a larvicide attack is ordered.


However, it’s not enough to merely know how many larvae are in a sample. Mosquito control also needs to know if the mature mosquitoes the larvae become are carrying disease. That’s when a fixed-wing asset is called upon—chickens. Yes, even chickens valiantly serve in the mosquito wars. They don’t volunteer; they’re drafted, and then put in cages and transported to mosquito sites. There they are bitten. Finally, blood samples are taken to determine if any disease is present.


38


Sept/Oct 2016


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