February 2020 – Moosalamoo Woods & Waters

February 27, 2020February 28, 2020

BLSG wants 51% more from Salisbury

At last week’s meeting of the BLSG Board of Trustees, Treasurer and long-time representative from Brandon, Wayne Rausenberger, made a couple of revealing statements.

“I think of the adulticide business as a Band-Aid, and it’s an emergency Band-Aid because we can’t do it the best possible way which is more larvicide work because we don’t have the funds. That to me is what it boils down to.”

This is a sentiment with a long history among BLSG board members and there was no opposition to Rausenberger’s comment at this meeting. It is no secret that roadside spraying of adulticides kills only a portion of the mosquitoes in a narrow swath along roads, for only a couple of hours, has no long-term impact, and happens only once every week or two (details here). Most residents of Salisbury who live on rural roads see little benefit from BLSG’s intermittent roadside spraying.

February 23, 2020September 20, 2020

BLSG Board resists compliance with state request

In advance of last Thursday’s BLSG Board of Trustees meeting, Mike Blaisdell, BLSG Chair, called Patti Casey of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. He wanted to discuss a statement Casey had made two weeks earlier. Casey was responding to the annual report that BLSG had submitted for inclusion in the Town Reports of BLSG’s member towns. The report included false claims about the ability of BLSG activities to reduce the risk that a resident will contract a mosquito-borne disease.

Casey’s response was unequivocal and confirmed our position that 1) BLSG is not authorized to mention that their operation has any impact on mosquito-borne disease, that 2) truck-mounted adulticide spraying has no substantial impact on mosquito-borne disease, and that 3) BLSG has been avoiding state recommendations and honest public relations for some time.

Before the board meeting Blaisdell had conferred with Jeff Whiting, BLSG Vice Chair representing Goshen, and decided that they would recommend that the Board comply with Casey’s requests to change BLSG’s stance on this issue. Blaisdell told the board that evening; “We feel that we shouldn’t say anything about the diseases that mosquitoes carry … because, one, it does look like we are trying to campaign off of the diseases that they carry.” There was an immediate response from Will Mathis, the BLSG Operations Manager; “Aren’t we?” This set the stage for a 15 minute discussion of whether BLSG’s longstanding strategy of overstating the risk of arboviruses to garner support for their activities was a good thing or a bad thing.

February 19, 2020February 10, 2021

Where are Vermont’s worst mosquitoes?

There are only two mosquito control districts (MCDs) in Vermont: the Brandon-Leicester-Salisbury-Goshen-Pittsford District (BLSG) and the adjacent Lemon Fair District. Mosquitoes are present throughout Vermont, but the lonely presence of these two MCDs suggests there might be a lot more mosquitoes in this part of the state. Indeed, the broad floodplain of Otter Creek runs right through the two districts, and thousands of acres of wetlands and low-lying agricultural fields there can be prime breeding grounds for mosquitoes.

Finding evidence to confirm that there are more mosquitoes there than elsewhere in Vermont is difficult. The Vermont Agency of Agriculture has been trapping mosquitoes throughout Vermont for several years and now has traps in every county and in more than 83 of the state’s 237 towns. Unfortunately, that trapping program is not designed to document how many mosquitoes are present. Its primary goal is to collect mosquitoes to analyze for mosquito-borne diseases. A preliminary analysis by the Agency of Agriculture indicates that traps in Grand Isle County captured a lot more mosquitoes than in either Rutland or Addison Counties. But there does not seem to be reliable scientific evidence that the BLSG District has either more or fewer mosquitoes than elsewhere in Vermont.

If the BLSG District is not the buggiest area in Vermont, why are the only MCDs in the state there? Could it be nothing more than an historical accident?

February 5, 2020February 15, 2020

BLSG’s arbovirus disinformation earns another state rebuke

Last month, the Salisbury Select Board deleted a paragraph in the annual report submitted by BLSG for inclusion in the Town Reports of BLSG member towns. The offending paragraph suggested that BLSG’s activities reduced the risk of residents contracting a disease from a mosquito bite. This type of false information has been repeated by BLSG for many years and we have been asking them to stop for at least two years. BLSG’s message is demonstrably false but their website and public statements continue the disinformation campaign despite direct rebukes from state officials.

Today, Patti Casey, the Environmental Surveillance Program Director at Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture, offered another strong reprimand. Patti Casey copied the following statement to us and to two state officials in Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture and Department of Health. The statement confirms our position that 1) BLSG is not authorized to even mention that their operation has any impact on mosquito-borne disease, that 2) truck-mounted adulticide spraying has no substantial impact on mosquito-borne disease, and that 3) BLSG has been defying state recommendations and honest public relations for some time.