The business of eradicating mosquitoes and disease

It was first reported in Logan a couple weeks ago and now, over this past weekend, Benson and Hyrum have had trapped mosquitoes test positive for West Nile Virus. A KVNU listener had texted in that they had seen trucks in their neighborhood fogging and inquired – what exactly is being sprayed? It is surprisingly high tech.

On KVNU’s For the People program on Tuesday, Field Operations Manager of the Cache County Mosquito Abatement District Richard Rigby said especially at the beginning of the season they set out approximately 16 traps every Monday night from Lewiston to Avon and then pick them up Tuesday morning.

“Then we take those mosquitoes, speciate them because there’s two species of mosquitoes here in the valley that carry the West Nile Virus: the Culex species, one’s a Culex Pipien (and it’s a tiny mosquito) and also the Culex Tarsalis. Those two carry your West Nile Virus. So we try to get them, then we send those down to the state health lab and that’s where they get tested for the West Nile,” said Rigby.

He said this week they’re sending 19 vials down to the lab so we will have to see if there is more of the virus in locally-trapped mosquitoes. Rigby said much of their work involves attacking larvae early in the spring. He said the hot summer with less water around, unfortunately, does not reduce the risk.

Corn is probably one of our biggest nemesis because, you think about it, most of them either flood irrigate or they have the pivot.  And so you got those pivots that have those tire tracks that come through there and we  just can’t get in there to check and those mosquitoes have to have water to be able to breed.”

For more information about what the mosquito abatement does and the fogging schedule, go to CacheMosquito.com. Logan City, on their website, has information about what you can do to reduce the number of mosquitoes on your property.

AUDIO: Jason Williams talks to Richard Rigby about mosquitoes and West Nile

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

For security, use of Google's reCAPTCHA service is required which is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

I agree to these terms.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.