Just Sayin’: Reduce spraying, use bats to stop mosquitoes
September 16, 2016 By Newsday Readers
FILE - In this Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2016 file photo, a health workers stands in the Sambadrome spraying insecticide to combat the Aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits the Zika virus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Sambadrome will be used for the Archery competition during the 2016 summer games. Canadian professor Amir Attaran, one of the leading critics of the World Health Organization said Tuesday June 14, 2016 that he was recently invited to sit on the U.N. health agency's Zika emergency committee only to have his invitation rescinded when he refused to sign a confidentiality clause. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, File) (Credit: AP)
I have not been to Fire Island in many years, and I refuse to go, much as I would like to.
Why? I read on newsday.com nearly every day that Suffolk County is spraying toxic chemicals to combat mosquitoes. I don’t believe the chemicals, including Anvil and Scourge, are safe.
I don’t know why the county insists on poisoning fragile ecosystems with these toxic chemicals. Residents and visitors are not unaffected. When spraying, the county warns children and pregnant women to avoid exposure.
Why doesn’t Suffolk County take a fraction of the mosquito budget and invest in and install bat houses? Healthy populations of bats could be brought in, if necessary. Bats eat thousands of insects, especially mosquitoes, every night. I’m about to install a new bat house in my front yard.
By killing mosquitoes, the county virtually assures that bats will leave the area. Not only mosquitoes are killed; beneficial insects also die. The poisons break the food chain in the ecosystem.
Sharyn DiGeronimo, Selden
Editor’s note: The writer is a registered medical assistant.
__________________
The Principle of Least Interest: He who cares least about a relationship, controls it.
Bats are fabulous for keeping the insect population down. And they are protected here. You cannot hurt a bat - it's a $2,500 fine, even if they get in your house.
You can install bat boxes in your trees to encourage them to nest there.
__________________
LawyerLady
I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you.
My landscape company uses an organic insecticide on my lawn and it really works. I also have a lot of bats flying around at night. This year the bugs have not been an issue, with our drought there is little water for mosquito's to lay their larvae.
__________________
Sometimes you're the windshield, and sometimes you're the bug.
They eat their weight in insects, it's what they were made for.
When the county began destroying the 100+ wooded acres across from us, I knew for sure the bats would leave.
But the county put the boxes in the trees, top or the press boxes and even built stands for houses.
__________________
A flock of flirting flamingos is pure, passionate, pink pandemonium-a frenetic flamingle-mangle-a discordant discotheque of delirious dancing, flamboyant feathers, and flamingo lingo.
