the NORTHEASTER PRESIDENT S MESSAGE NORTHEASTERN MOSQUITO CONTROL ASSOCIATION July 2007 No. 21

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1 M N.. A C.. NORTHEASTERN MOSQUITO CONTROL ASSOCIATION the NORTHEASTER ~ IN THIS ISSUE ~ July 2007 No. 21 PRESIDENT S MESSAGE NMCA Contact Information NMCA Annual Meeting Information NMCA Scholarship information The Mosquito Roundup - News from around the membership NMCA Call for Papers (insert) Newsletter contact information and so much more!! next deadline: October 1, 2007 easy task I can assure you. H ere it is middle of July already. I can tell by the frenzied look on everyone s face around here. What has started out as a fairly reasonable season much thanks to cooler temps - has escalated rapidly to full scale control operations. Never a dull moment here in the Northeast. The NMCA s Executive Board and newly Revitalized Committees have been busy as well: conference planning, program development and a new list-serve to boot. The Advisory Committee has been charged with the task of writing position statements on EEE response and water management and will be working towards drafting a dipping protocol that satisfies the scientist, the entomologist and the field worker in us all not an I want to encourage those of you who are interested or may know someone who is interested to contact the Scholarship Committee, now seeking qualified applicants for the NMCA s annual scholarships and awards: the Bob Armstrong Award, the McColgan Grant-in-Aid Award, the Jobbins Scholarship, the Dave Scott Memorial Award and the David H. Colburn Award. You can contact me or more information is available on our web site: Finally, I would like to offer you all a Keep up the Good Work! Those of us who are lucky enough to be out in the field this time of year deserve an extra pat on the back right about now. You are the heart of our business. Regardless of conditions you take each task as it comes; treating basins, collecting (continued on page 3) 1

2 NMCA OFFICERS PRESIDENT Emily Sullivan, NE Mass MC&WMD (978) st VICE PRESIDENT Robert Thorndike, Plymouth County MCP (781) ~ NEWS YOU CAN USE ~ Check this issue for information on the 2007 Annual Meeting in Plymouth, MA. Send your comments to: newsletter@nmca.org 2 nd VICE PRESIDENT Wally Terrill, Clarke Mosquito Control, Inc. (413) secondvp@nmca.org SECRETARY Raymond Zucker, Plymouth County MCP (781) secretary@nmca.org TREASURER David Boyes, Envirosolutions LLC (401) treasurer@nmca.org NMCA BOARD OF DIRECTORS ONE YEAR David Lawson, Norfolk County MCP (781) nmcabod1@nmca.org TWO YEAR Esteban Cuebas-Incle, NE Mass MC&WMD (978) Nmcabod2@nmca.org THREE YEAR Roger Wolfe, CT DEP WHAMM Program (860) nmcabod3@nmca.org INDUSTRY REPRESENTATIVE Sarah MacGregor, Dragon Mosquito Control (603) indrep@nmca.org PAST PRESIDENT Timothy Deschamps, Central MA MCP (508) pastpresident@nmca.org NEWSLETTER Tim Deschamps, NMCA Editor newsletter@nmca.org WEBMASTER webmaster@nmca.org GENERAL INFORMATION info@nmca.org FOR A LIST OF COMMITTEE CHAIRS AND ASSIGNMENTS, AND OTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE SEE THE NMCA WEBSITE AT 2 SUPPORT NMCA The NMCA Editorial Staff would like to thank the sponsors of this issue, and would like to ask the membership to take notice of the advertisements in this issue and please support our sponsors. ~ NOTE FROM THE EDITOR ~ The NMCA list serv is now active!! This moderated list is for the discussion of topics related to mosquitoes in the Northeast and topics relevant to the Northeastern Mosquito Control Association..log on to today and sign up!! If you have ideas or submissions for the NMCA website, please contact the NMCA webmaster at webmaster@nmca.org.

3 surveillance data, monitoring water management sites, larviciding, truck spraying and even public relations. Those of us who are stuck in the office too: whether it s coordinating control strategies, answering phones, paying bills, identifying mosquitoes, mapping or entering data you are intrinsic at any level. All of us play a vital role in the workings of a very complex and highly scrutinized field and you should be commended for your professionalism and diligence. Good luck to you all with the remainder of this season. - Emily Sullivan, NMCA President ~ NMCA SCHOLARSHIP & AWARDS ~ The NMCA Executive Board wants to remind everyone it s the right time to consider candidates for the various scholarships, grants and awards that the NMCA offers to the membership each year. The Bob Armstrong Award: is given to a NMCA member for meritorious service to NMCA and mosquito control The McColgan Grant-in-Aid: will go to an individual whose work is directly related to the advancement of operational mosquito control. The Jobbins Scholarship: will go to a student whose work is in an area relevant to mosquito or biting-fly control in the Northeast. The Dave Scott Memorial Award: This award may acknowledge an improvement in a procedure, a practice, any of the many operational strategies that we perform in mosquito control on a day-to-day basis. The David H. Colburn Award: This award is dedicated to David H. Colburn, charter member of NMCA, in recognition of his service to mosquito control and his perfect attendance for the first 50 NMCA Annual Meetings. NMCA members in good standing for at least 2 years and with 20 years consecutive or cumulative in mosquito control are eligible. For more information on these awards, please contact Emily Sullivan, Scholarship/Awards Chair at (978) or check the website at < on the Annual Meeting page. 3

4 2007 ANNUAL MEETING INFORMATION The 53rd Annual NMCA Meeting will be held at the Radisson Hotel at Plymouth Harbor in Plymouth, MA from December 3-5, Room cost for NMCA will be $98 per night (single rate plus 5.7% Mass tax and 4% local tax) - please specify the "Northeastern Mosquito Control Association Annual Meeting when you book your room. This special rate is only effective until Nov. 19, 2007 so please book soon!! The Radisson Hotel Plymouth Harbor 180 Water St. Plymouth, MA Phone: (508) Fax: (508) info@radissonplymouth.com Website: ~ CONGRATULATIONS ~ The Wetlands Habitat and Mosquito Management (WHAMM) Program crew received an award from the Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Gina McCarthy for the Distinguish Team Service Award for The Team Service Award was given to Frank Shaw, Steve Rosa, Donnie Hargreaves, Don Andersen and Daniel Shaw. 4

5 In this column, you will find mosquito and arbovirus news from the membership, from New England to New Jersey. Haven t submitted anything for this issue? Look for the contact information at the end of this newsletter and submit news from your organization next time. A paragraph or two is all that s needed. Give it some thought. The Mosquito Roundup Norfolk County MCP The Norfolk County Mosquito Control Project (NCMCP) has experienced a fairly typical mosquito season so far in Heavy rains in mid April produced a combination of spring and summer reflood mosquito species including an unusually early emergence of Aedes vexans. As a result, the calls for service were up for May setting a new record for the month. As June matured the wetlands, especially floodplains, began to dry down and the calls fell off. Although the calls for May and early June were high, the traps indicated far fewer reflood mosquitoes than in The feeling here is the record calls for May were an artifact of heavy media coverage early on and residual public anxiety as a result of extremely high EEE activity in As of early July we are now tracking a fairly impressive emergence of Coquillettidia perturbans at certain CDC light trap sites. Concurrent with this the State has confirmed the first EEE isolate in Culiseta melanura in Bristol County. At a time when some say we are on the declining side of EEE activity as we enter the forth year of increased activity I hope this is not a bad omen. As far as the salt marshes go we are all scratching our heads as to why the June high tide (the highest predicted tide of the summer) produced few Ochlerotatus sollicitans. Some feel fresh water flooding of the marshes as a result of heavy rains just prior to this tide event interfered with normal larval development. As far as control activities, NCMCP conducted an expanded spring aerial larval control application in late April which targeted some floodplain habitat as well as the typical spring habitat. Currently NCMCP is continuing to employ ground ULV applications in response to complaint calls and surveillance data. NCMCP is also in the process of treating rain basins in high rain basin density areas of the county. Fortunately the tropics have been quiet although we all have been paying more attention to the satellite loops of the Atlantic Ocean Basin and the Gulf. What we don t need now is the heavy rains accompanying one of these tropical systems, especially with EEE on the horizon. - John J. Smith, Director Two boys from the city were on a camping trip. The mosquitoes were so fierce, the boys had to hide under their blankets to keep from being bitten. Then one of them saw some fireflies and said to his friend, "We might as well give up, they're coming at us with flashlights!" 5

6 AVERAGES: An average beaver can cut down two hundred trees a year An average pig squeals at a range from 100 to 115 decibels An ear of corn averages 800 kernels in 16 rows Average calories burned daily by the sled dogs running in Alaska's annual Iditarod race: 10,000 Average length of a coat hanger when straightened: 44 inches Average number of eggs laid by the female American Oyster per year: 500 million. Usually only one oyster out of the bunch reaches maturity Average number of hummingbirds required to create the weight of 1 ounce: 18 Average number of squirts from a cow's udder needed to yield a gallon of milk : 345 Cats average 16 hours of sleep a day, more than any other mammal Every square inch of the human body has an average of 32 million bacteria on it Humans shed about 600,000 particles of skin every hour - about 1.5 pounds a year. By 70 years of age, an average person will have lost 105 pounds of skin. Connecticut Mosquito Mgmt -Here we are again in the middle of a hot dry summer In previous years, that meant lots of West Nile Virus around August. CT had lots of mosquitoes in the spring flooding of the river valleys in May. Now we got our first WNV positive pool of mosquitoes in Manchester on June 26. The CAES is trapping mosquitoes and the DEP WHAMM Program has been very busy larviciding our state own salt marshes. We just finished an OMWM project at the Tuttle Point Marsh in Guilford on seven acres. To date, no mosquito breeding has occur on this project. At the end of July we are creating a 1-acre "Shallow Water Wetland" project at the Bafflin Nature Sanctuary in Pomfret, CT with the CT Audubon Society, engineered by the National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and funded by NRCS, CT Audubon and DEP WHAMM Program. In August, we are getting ready to spray herbicides on several hundred acres of Phragmites throughout CT. -Paul Capotosto and Roger Wolfe Central Mass MCP A busy spring has calmed down a bit; mosquito numbers are up in Epi week #28 but service requests are down and we have caught up kudos to our work crews. Weekly information on our surveillance data is uploaded on our website at Included on the website is 2007 rainfall versus a 25 year average, and weekly rainfall versus a 2 year average from our own weather station. This year we expanded our aerial larvicide program into a third town, for a total of about 1,800 acres. Not much by some standards, but we re getting there!! Overall efficacy where Bti was evident was 86.91%, and the operation went smoothly after we received 4.1 inches of rain during the week we scheduled for application! Ongoing research at CMMCP includes bottle assays for resistance management, adulticide efficacy trials and our (limited) participation in the bloodmeal analysis of Cs. melanura. I am happy to announce that I have been informed that our PESP status has been approved by the PESP Working Group and they will be recommending to the AMCA Board of Directors for acceptance in mid-october. Thanks Gabi at Cape Cod MCP for all your help!! Summer will be over before you know it, and hopefully no human or horse cases of virus we ll see you at the NMCA meeting in Plymouth!! -Tim Deschamps, Exec. Director 6

7 Pesticide Registration (PR) Notice : Labeling Statements on Products Used for Adult Mosquito Control 1. What does this Notice announce, and what pesticides are affected? The Notice sets out seven Agency recommendations for label language on products used for control of adult mosquitoes. These recommendations apply only to products labeled for wide-area application as Ultra Low Volume (ULV) sprays or fogs, and not to home and garden use products which list mosquitoes on the label, or to coarse non- ULV sprays intended for residual treatment of vegetation or other surfaces. Control of mosquito larvae in water is a wholly different use pattern from adult mosquito control, and is not included in the scope of this Notice. For the full text, please check this link: Here's another 'junket' for you 'phrag-phanatics' Phragmites workshop, Cornell University, Ithaca New York, Oct , 2007 and Identification workshop at Montezuma Wetlands Complex Oct. 17, This two-day workshop is intended to discuss the latest findings on spread, impacts, genetics and control methods (mechanical, chemical and biological). A particular emphasis will be placed on differences between native and introduced genotypes and the need to protect endemic genotypes. A second emphasis will be discussion of the ongoing research to develop biological control. We will review the current status and potential implications for the protection of endemic genotypes. An optional workshop on Phragmites identification on October 17th will allow participants to see native and introduced genotypes at the Montezuma Wetlands Complex (1 hour north of Ithaca). The meeting will be hosted by the Ecology and Management of Invasive Plants Program and coordinated by Bernd Blossey. This workshop is intended both for researchers as well as land managers and we look forward to these interactions. We strongly encourage graduate students to attend and present their work. For programmatic information or additional details please contact Bernd Blossey (bb22@cornell.edu) and/or visit the website: 7

8 ~ SUBMISSION INFORMATION ~ Do you have news about your program, interest in writing a column, or any type of submission for the newsletter? Please send it in any one of these ways: newsletter@nmca.org Fax: Phone: Postal Mail: c/o CMMCP 111 Otis St. Northboro, MA Attn. Tim Deschamps, NMCA Editor Thank you in advance for any and all ideas - TD. NORTHEASTERN MOSQUITO CONTROL ASSOCIATION mosquito control for health and comfort the Northeaster Newsletter of the Northeastern Mosquito Control Association c/o Central Mass. Mosquito Control Project Attn. Tim Deschamps, NMCA Editor 111 Otis Street Northborough, MA