What is area wide mosquito management? Mosquito management has advanced a lot in Europe the past two-three decades. It has moved from previous indiscriminate mosquito control approaches where plethora of harmful chemical pesticides were being applied, in order to control for diseases like malaria, to the use of environmentally friendly biological products that target mosquito species. Nowadays, in Europe chemical pesticides are only allowed to be used exceptionally under certain cases where there is proven disease risk within a certain site, minimising this way side-effects of chemical pesticides on non-target organisms but also on human health. Indiscriminate mosquito control has now been completely replaced by integrated mosquito management.
For a succesful integrated mosquito control programme it is essential that a code of practice is followed before any control methods are applied. There is a need to build a strategy in order to be able to manage mosquitoes. You need to know well your site and be knowledgeable about the mosquito fauna that is causing the problems. Then you need to build a strategy and monitor the mosquito populations in order to be capable to intervene in case mosquito numbers exceed certain thresholds that could cause nuisance or disease. You then have to build a database with your findings and communicate this information to the public and other stakeholders. But more importantly you do not have to be in this integrated mosquito management plan alone. You need to identify at the very beginning other stakeholders (eg land owners, public health agencies, community representatives) and share responsibilities, resources and manpower with them. Everyone needs to contribute. Our team specialises in creating holistic mosquito management plans, in raising awareness about mosquitoes and in developing citizen-science programmes.