By Karyssa D’Agostino
“Just out of curiosity how many of you have Lyme disease or know someone who has had Lyme disease?” Wilma Morrissey, the chair of the Monmouth County Environmental Council, asked a room filled with over 40 Monmouth County residents.
Everyone in the room raised their hand.
New Jersey had the third most reported cases of Lyme disease in the country in 2017 and 61 cases and three deaths from West Nile virus in 2018. These facts compelled the Monmouth County Environmental Council to choose this topic for its 2019 roundtable event, Ticks and Mosquitoes in Monmouth County, held June 5 in the Monmouth County Agricultural building.
The council’s goal was to inform and prepare the public for the tick and mosquito season.
Everyone in the room came ready to take notes and ask questions. Unfortunately, residents who came seeking a solution for ticks in their area did not get the answer they were looking for.
After receiving several questions about tick control, Dina Fonseca, director of the Rutgers Center for Vector Biology, informed the audience that there still is no successful way to control or remove ticks.
An audience member asked what happened to the studies of breeding and releasing large numbers of sterile insects.
“They’re not publishing, which means it ain’t working,” Fonseca responded, generating a laugh from the crowd.
“It really is community action,” Fonseca said. “With a lot of these invasive species, we have to take care of our own backyards.”
Victoria Thompson, superintendent of the Monmouth County Mosquito Control Division, informed the audience about the Mosquito Control and Tick Surveillance programs.
“Our mission is to provide scientifically based mosquito control,” Thompson said. “We emphasize science.”
She explained how the division uses multiple modes of prevention to try to control mosquitos and avoid spraying pesticide unless it is absolutely necessary. Control methods are based on data from surveillance they’ve collected.
The presenters made it very clear to the audience that if there is water, there will be mosquitos. Removing containers that collect water and monitoring water conditions is imperative for mosquito control, they said.
Thompson informed the audience of the different prevention and intervention programs the Monmouth County Mosquito Control Division has in place. Their water management program modifies water conditions to be unsupportive of the mosquito larvae.
They have a tire collecting program every spring where they pick up old tires from woodland areas and people’s yards to prevent them from collecting water.
There is also a fish program that uses Gambusia affinis (mosquito fish) and fathead minnows provided by the New Jersey State Mosquito Control Commission to control mosquitos.
Residents can call or go online to request service for mosquitos. Someone from the division will come out, survey the area for mosquito larvae and treat the area if necessary. They do not do any control of adult flying mosquitos. Thompson explained that only occurs community-wide.
“We have over 3,500 catalog sites,” Thompson said. “We hire 13 seasonals that go into the field and help our inspectors.”
These inspectors go in the field to find, document and treat mosquito larvae every year.
Monmouth County has a helicopter that does aerial surveillance of large flooded areas. They use foot inspectors who walk around the edge of the area to document there is larvae present and then the helicopter will only spray over the water area.
Lastly, Thompson talked about the tick program. This includes passive surveillance in which residents can bring in ticks for identification.
“You can bring ticks to us and we will identify it for free,” Thompson said. “We’ll give you a nice report. It will tell you what the species is, the development stage and what diseases it could possibly carry.”
The division is also actively surveilling ticks, sampling in over 19 sites.
The Monmouth County Mosquito Control Division no longer does disease testing on ticks.
