By Jonathan Zuckerman, Mosquito Reduction Enthusiast

Once again as the temperatures start to rise we can begin to look forward to the resurgence of nature, but one thing nobody ever looks forward to is the scourge of mosquitoes. How can we enjoy the outdoors this year without the constant nuisance of bug bites? Many companies will try to sell you a pesticide spraying service, but spraying for mosquitos is ineffective and harmful to all living creatures.

The first neighborhood-level action we should take to reduce this nuisance without harming other wildlife is to regularly eliminate standing water in our yards so there’s no place for mosquitoes to breed. Some mosquitoes can breed in only a tablespoon of water. If we all walked our yards within 3-5 days of a rainfall to check for standing water, it would be sufficient to disrupt their lifecycle. Be sure to check places you might not regularly notice, such as rain gutters, drainage pipes/tubes, and dense ivy patches. I would also suggest that you offer to do the same for your less mobile or outdoorsy neighbors—some of our mosquitos range only about 600 feet but other species go as far as 2 miles. Just imagine: if every household within 2 miles of you spent 5 minutes after a rain shower to ensure there were no breeding spots for mosquitos, we might completely eliminate them from our own backyards. If you have a birdbath or other water feature, keep the water moving, refresh it every few days, or add chemical larvicide to the water.

The next thing we can do is to set up mosquito traps  in our yards—any mosquitos that do breed nearby can be lured to lay their eggs in a trap where a larvicide will ensure the larvae do not mature into more adult mosquitos. Making the traps takes about 5 minutes and you may already have the materials at hand: it requires only a bucket, some yard detritus, water, and a mosquito dunk. You can buy larvicide dunks for the traps at any hardware store but to get the best deal I make an annual bulk order and distribute them to participating neighbors in April.