{ SPECIAL REPORT }
KEEPING THE BUZZ AT BAY
Bergen County is working hard to control mosquitoes, and there are steps you can take to do the same. By Leslie Garisto Pfaff Matthew Bickerton is a trapper, but his quarry isn’t fox or marten, and he doesn’t have to venture into the woods to track it down. In fact, Bickerton doesn’t particularly want to find anything in his traps, though at this time of year they’re never empty. As an entomologist with Bergen County’s Department of Health, he’s after decidedly smaller game—specifically, mosquitoes—and he’s not out to kill them, but to count them. His discoveries help the county’s Department of Mosquito Control determine where the pests are breeding; what diseases, if any, they’re carrying; and how bad they’re going to be this year—an estimation that depends largely on prevailing weather conditions. “Warm and wet works for mosquitoes and virus,” he says, referring to West Nile virus, the predominant disease transmitted from mosquitoes to humans. Last year in Bergen County, June was very warm and very wet, as were July, August and September, and the mosquito population was one of the highest in recent memory. Water is a particular problem because it’s where mosquitoes lay their eggs. From the Meadowlands to your backyard birdbath, those eggs are getting ready to hatch into the tiny larvae, known as wrigglers, that will become full-fledged mosquitoes in a matter of days, their sights (or, better put, their proboscises) trained on you and your family. That doesn’t mean the county isn’t hard at
work keeping mosquito populations down, or that there’s nothing you can do to keep the pests from ruining your summer. In both cases, though, diligence is required. Bergen is home to some 40 different species of mosquito, each behaving somewhat differently. “Some,” notes Warren Staudinger, director of the county’s mosquito control department, “are really dependent on rain— those are our floodwater mosquitoes. Others like stagnant water—we call them backyard, containerinhabiting mosquitoes.” Most tend to feed at dawn and dusk, but at least one species— the Asian tiger mosquito, so called for its striking black and white stripes— is perfectly comfortable chowing down (on you) during the day as well. You probably don’t need this article to tell you that mosquitoes are at their worst in July, August and September. “That’s when the phone rings off the hook,” says Staudinger, “and the Asian tiger mosquito is the cause of most of those complaints.” When asked what residents are complaining about, Grace Grootenboer, the county’s chief mosquito BERGENMAG.COM
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