Phil Goodman, Commissioner District II, Board Chair of Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on with the mosquitos.
The cold weather definitely helps keep the mosquitoes at bay.
Goodman said, “We have had several rains in the last week, and most of these rains, the ground was pretty dry, so the water just soaked right in. We’ve had some high tides, and we do have some mosquito breeding in certain areas, we found larvae, but we’ve been able to stay ahead of that. So right now, the nuisance mosquito, the salt marsh mosquito that we have is our main problem for nuisance, is well under control right now throughout the Florida Keys. This time of year, while it’s cold, we use this time to do a lot of scheduled maintenance on all of our assets, our helicopters, our trucks, our spraying equipment and and people take vacation right now, because nobody takes vacation at mosquito control between March and October. So right now we’re very much active because mosquitoes are still out there, but right now under very good control.”
What about mosquito borne diseases?
Goodman said, “The mosquito borne diseases are still coming into Florida. We have none here in Florida Keys. We’ve been able to keep this out, but it’s all around us, South America, Central America, the Caribbean, some of these are in the tropics and South America, so they’re in their summertime now, and still a lot of travel into Florida from these countries. So the introduction of mosquito borne diseases continues, mainly Dengue fever and chikungunya, very large numbers still coming in, even last week, and for the last several months, it just continues to grow. We expect this will continue all winter. This is the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is our number one disease vector here in the Florida Keys, we certainly have that mosquito and it’s under good control right now, but it doesn’t take that many of those to really cause widespread infections. If you get infection introduced into the mosquito population, and we’re really working hard to keep that out here, but Miami Dade, it probably has about half of the cases of all of these in the state of Florida. So we stay vigilant here. We are out working every day, taking mosquito counts, being sure that we keep the Aedes aegypti mosquito in check. Right now, the numbers are really in good control all over the Keys. But this can change quickly, so we have to assess the part of our business where we have to really continue, year round, keeping good control over it, and a lot of new technologies that we’re using now that really help us and will help us in the future. So it’s something that’s always evolving.”
There will be a mosquito control board meeting today.
Goodman said, “We have really about four committee meetings, plus our regular monthly meeting starting the new year. And this workshop is probably one of the big things we do every year. After we get all the numbers in from the previous year, we look back at what went wrong, what went right? What do we need to change to to really continuously improve, which is our goal on mosquito control. Today, the two big topics are what are we doing this year that we had problems last year as far as identifying new breeding sites? We have a lot of new breeding sites because of sea level rise, and we have several new technologies, one, including LiDAR, which is a mapping program that uses lasers that we are starting to investigate that we think will be in place to help us this year. You’re actually able to see water through the foliage, through the mangroves, and identify new breeding sites either by drone or by our helicopter. So that’s a big thing. Plus, also, we’re meeting with all of the managers of these protected lands trying to get new contracts with them to be able to treat a little bit more than we have in the past, still maintaining environmental awareness of all these areas. So those are two of the main things. Also education. We realize with all of the new people moving to the Florida Keys, plus our visitors coming in, two thirds of the property sales here in the Florida Keys, in the state of Florida, are from people from out of state who really don’t understand mosquito control, like we have to do here in Florida. So we are increasing our outreach for this next year in the public schools and in clubs, and to more or less let people know what they can do, also to help protect, particularly against the Aedes aegypti, because that’s the mosquito that we breed around our homes, and it likes to stay around people. So there’s a lot of things that we can do as residents and visitors to protect ourselves and our community. So these are the main things that we’ll be talking about today in preparation for hopefully improvements for this coming season.”
The Florida Mosquito Control Association Dodd short courses are coming up next week.
Goodman said, “This is training that’s offered in Florida and has been for a number of years, we get people coming from Florida. There will be hundreds of people there from Florida, from mosquito control for different types of training. It’ll be a one week of training, a lot of different courses. Every aspect of mosquito control will be discussed. A lot of our inspectors go there for advanced training and certification required by the state for their jobs and we also get people coming from out of state and actually out of the country here, because it’s become very well known as, really one of the leading training centers for mosquito control technology. I’ll be up there for one day. We have one day where all of the directors from the state and all of the commissioners from the state get together, and this is where we exchange information on what makes Florida number one in mosquito control. A lot of different types of mosquito control operations throughout the state, depending on where you are, but that’s where we share information, so that everybody gets access to the same technology and can continue to improve as a state. Because what happens in one part of the state affects all of us in mosquito control. If somebody’s got disease spreading, this impacts everything. And so we all work together to try to to keep Florida number one in mosquito control. It’s an ongoing program, but we see continuous improvement, over year after year because of this. So we look forward to this training.”
With the legislative session underway in Tallahassee, what are the issues for mosquito control?
Goodman said, “We have what we call mosquito control Tallahassee days every year. It’s similar to Florida Keys days, where most of the other government agencies go, but mosquito control, a lot of those, we need some special attention. So we have our own days there. And Jim Mooney, our representative and Ana Maria Rodriguez, our senator here, they very much understand and support mosquito control. But throughout the rest of the state of Florida, you’ve got a lot of new legislators in there, some of them not that familiar with mosquito control, and we always go up there and try to educate them on the importance of mosquito control. This year, it’s especially important because of all the discussions of what may happen to property taxes. Mosquito control is about 100% supported by ad valorem property tax. So this is concerning to us. So we have a delegation, I’ll be part of it, going there to more or less go around and talk with all of our legislators, Senators and Representatives. There’ll be about 50 of us from the state going there, and to be sure that they understand the impact that we have on public health, on the economy and on the tourism trade. Mosquito control is really a prerequisite before any of these things can happen, particularly in the economy and people tend to forget this, because, I think over the years, we’ve done a pretty good job of mosquito control, and mosquitoes are less now than they’ve ever been. But this is because of mosquito control. We’re mosquito control, not mosquito extermination. So if we stop our activities, it only takes a matter of weeks and maybe a month in the summertime that you would see the same mosquito conditions here that you saw in the 1920s with no mosquito control. So this is something that we constantly want to keep people aware of and here in the Florida Keys, especially, the only difference between the number of salt marsh mosquitoes in the Everglades and the number in the Florida Keys is Florida Keys Mosquito Control District, the mosquitoes would be just as bad years in the Everglades. So we have a special job here in the Keys to keep our economy going and quality of life issues and also protecting public health. So we keep driving this message home, because some people need to hear this pretty regularly. We’re concerned if they would eliminate property taxes, what would happen to the economy of Florida? So that’s the main issue. In 1940 before mosquito control was in Florida, it was less than 2 million people here. And today, we have more than 23 million people. We went from number 27th in the union as far as population back in 1940 to number three today. In the Florida Keys, last year, we had 5 million visitors here, left $3.5 billion and supported about 24,000 jobs just in the Florida Keys. So mosquito control is a big part of that winning formulation that brings the tourists here. A lot of people forget this. And so really, part of our job is to remind them that this just didn’t happen overnight, and there’s a lot of effort going in to control this. We’ve always been a behind the scenes operation and rightfully so. We like to control the mosquitoes, and we don’t make a big deal out of it, but at least our government people really need to be aware of the importance of it. That’s what the message we will be driving home in Tallahassee. We will have a big display there, right across from the Senate chambers in the Capitol and we’ll attract a lot of attention that day, as part of us will be visiting Senators and Representatives, but there’ll be a big booth maintained with a big awareness there of mosquitoes. We’ll have people dressed up as mosquitoes. And it’s a big day for us there, and we usually get a lot of attention. It’s a very, very positive day.”
Remember the Aedes aegypti mosquito is in the Keys year round.
Goodman reminded, “We just wanted people to continue to be vigilant, dumping water on their property and keeping their yards cleaned up so that there’s no debris there that these mosquitoes can breed in. They can breed in just a bottle cap of water, and if everybody really would continue to eliminate standing water on their property, this would make a big, big improvement in our ability to control this mosquito because it’s bred in all of our homes.”