Mosquito trap protection and vandalism reduction program

About the Program

Category: Health (Best in Category)

Year: 2021

Charlotte County Mosquito Control is committed to protecting the public health by providing effective and environmentally sensitive mosquito control. Charlotte County Mosquito Control provides mosquito control services to more than 200,000 residents across 858 square miles in Southwest Florida. Ten types of mosquitos in Charlotte County are known to carry and transmit diseases to humans. The cost and effectiveness of mosquito traps used to collect data on varieties and population of mosquitoes had been negatively impacted due to extensive land area monitored, limited staff and long drive times to place and retrieve mosquito traps. The traps were often disturbed or vandalized, providing no usable data and preventing the planning of mosquito treatments. A program to combat data loss and protect the mosquito traps was designed and implemented in 2019. The program both protected data and hardware that generated the data. The mosquito counting traps range in price from $1500-$1800, which made a large dent in program finances every time one was vandalized or destroyed. The design, creation and refinement of a protective casing, coupled with adding solar power, increased the lifespan of the operating trap and reduced the number of traps that provided no results. On average traps that were protected provided more data than unprotected traps. Additionally, there was no significant difference in the rate of mosquito capture between protected and unprotected traps.