MOSQUITO PEST SURVEY

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 26967, 17 February 1953, Page 8

MOSQUITO PEST SURVEY

HAREWOOD AREA EXAMINED R.N.Z.A.F. ENTOMOLOGIST’S REPORT A .survey of the land within a mile radius of Harewood airport, to determine its potential as a mosquito breeding area, and to find whether the safety measures being used in dealing with arriving and departing aircraft are adequate and efficient, has been completed by Dr. M. Laird, entomologist to the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Dr. Laird, who was assisted in his investigation by his wife, a research student attached to the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, found there were no malaria-carrying variety mosquitoes breeding in the area, but there were plenty the local variety, breeding in shingle pits and quarries. Such places were a potential danger as breeding places for mosquitoes which could carry malaria, and rubbish dumps were a danger because they could provide a breeding ground for those which carried yellow fever.

There was little danger from waterraces, except where the speed of flow was diminished, as at the edges, Dr. Laird reported. Dr. Laird recommended that all cans in dumps should be pierced, so they would not hold water, and that old motor-car tyres should be burned. There were, he said, some ponds which could be filled in, and certain varieties of fish could bg put in larger ones to eat the mosquito larvae. Bags of oiled sawdust were useful for ponds or stormwater sumps. The sawdust, soaked in old engine .oil or kerosene, seeped out and spread on the surface, killing mosquito larvae. Regarding the regulations covering departure of aircraft, Dr. Laird said there should be no relaxation, but an intensification of the measures at present in operation—the spraying' of aircraft with aerosol bombs by competent authorities, the careful inspection of the whole of the aircraft, including .wheel bays, cupboards, behind curtains; for insect life.

Dr. Laird’s investigation was made at the request of the Department of Health, and the Assistant-Medical Officer of Health at Christchurch (Dr. H. T. Knights), commenting on the report, said that such surveys were important, not only from the health viewpoint, but also because of tourist traffic and the need to protect agriculture from infestations such as the fruit fly which had ruined the Hawaiian fruit industry. iMosquitoes and other insects, he >said, soon adapted themselves to modern conditions of transport,'and the measures to combat them had to be checked consistently.