They trapped a mosquito with Triple E virus in Tiverton last week and the response was inevitable.

‘Bring in the air strikes. Nuke ’em all!’ Spray the whole area — that’ll fix them.

Except it won’t.

As is often the case with shock and awe, aerial spraying is more satisfying than effective. It wipes out mosquitos by the million, brings that good feeling of decisive action, but the benefits are fleeting.

Since the spray is most effective on mosquitos that happen to be out and about at the moment the plane flies by, countless more of the nuisances escape. And for those survivors, life is good.

They emerge to a world with precious few predators. The very same spray that killed their brethren also decimated their enemies. Dragonflies are mosquito eating machines but aerial spraying kills them. And spraying can take out other creatures that dine on mosquitos — birds, bats and even the tiny aquatic creatures that swallow mosquito larvae before they ever take wing. With natural predators gone, the EPA warns that the next generation of mosquitos will certainly come back with a vengeance.

Spraying cuts a swath through ‘good’ bugs as well. It destroys honeybees whose status is already fragile —without bees, crops cannot pollinate. And it kills butterflies, moths and more.
West Nile is a frightening, even lethal disease; Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) is worse. And spray advocates note that Anvil and other recent poisons are far less devastating than earlier versions that left dead zones in their wake. They say that timing and advance notice can offer a measure of protection to bees and organic farmers.

But while less dramatic, there are weapons in our arsenal that may be just as effective against mosquito-borne diseases and are certainly less harmful to bees, crops, fish and butterflies. These include targeted ground spraying around schools, and treating pools, ponds and street drains where mosquitos breed. Then there are the steps we can all take — use of mosquito repellents, staying indoors at dusk and removing the mosquito breeding places from our own yards.

Mosquitos were here before us and odds are they’ll outlive us. By now we ought to have learned that the heavy handed approach is generally the wrong way to deal with nature.