They make going outside a battle of endurance. You can’t stop moving, because when you do, they attack without mercy. You can dowse yourself in DEET or cover yourself from head to toe, but they’ll still find a way to torment.
The mosquitos are winning the war for the outdoors this summer.
“Really, mother nature threw the perfect storm at Revelstoke for mosquitoes this year,” says Cheryl Pippen of BWP Consulting, the company contracted to conduct mosquito control in the Revelstoke area.
I’ve written about mosquitoes before, and I’m always hesitant to do so out of fear of seeming soft. But eventually, things are brought up enough in conversation that it’s time to call the experts. In the case of mosquitoes it’s Pippen, who’s been working in the field for 18 years.
“People in Revelstoke, they really are amazing at taking the mosquitoes in stride,” she said. “The mosquitoes really are not pleasant right now.”
What’s happened is a combination of last year’s dry summer, the operations of the Revelstoke dam, and the ongoing rains and cool temperatures this year.
It starts with last year’s dry weather. Because of the lack of precipitation, the Arrow Lake reservoir didn’t come up to the same level as usual. That means a lot of mosquito eggs that would have hatched stayed dormant.
This year, the water came up a metre higher than last year, meaning the reservoir covered a lot more ground. All of a sudden, all those unhatched eggs had a chance to bloom and come out.
“They’ve had a couple of years to build up,” said Pippen. “Not only do we have massive habitat, but also really extreme densities of larvae when they did emerge.”
Then, it started raining, creating even more pools of water for mosquitoes to emerge from.
To top it all off, the mosquitoes didn’t start to hatch until mid-June. If they had come during May’s heat wave, they might have died off quickly. Instead, they thrived.
Pippen said her firm did spray larvaecide from helicopters in the most well-known breeding grounds, and that they’re going out every week, spraying from backpacks. But it’s not enough.
“Even if we’re killing 80 per cent, a tonne get out,” she said, adding there’s no way they can spray every little pond and puddle in the area.
“When it’s raining like that, every little pool in the forest is developing a few larvae,” she said. “We can’t wander through the forest and look at every mud puddle. Those are also contributing to it and we’re not even looking at those. It’s impossible to treat them.”
What will it take to end the outbreak? A few days of hot, dry weather – AKA summer – should knock them back.
“We’re run off our feet trying hard to solve the problem but at this point we’re really hoping for a hot spell,” said Pippen. “We need sun, 27–30 degrees for four days and you’d see a huge improvement. We’re not asking for much, we’re asking for normal summer weather.”
In the meantime, we’ll just have to tolerate them and do our best to cope.
