Elche council has announced that it is intensifying the fumigation campaign to control mosquito infestations after the recent rains.
The initiative was presented in La Marina by the Councillor for Health, Mariola Galiana, the manager of CTL, Joaquín Bernabeú, and the technical manager of CTL in the Elche delegation, Estefanía Hernández.
The new device, which is completed with 15 reinforcement teams, incorporates a new smaller drone that is added to a larger one and is made up of a nebulizer cannon, three spray cannons, a zodiac, an electric motorcycle and a quad.
As the councillor recalled, the town hall works throughout the year to combat the plague of mosquitoes and during the rainiest months, treatments are intensified throughout the municipality with special emphasis on the Camp d’Elx.
Galiana stressed that in the last month rainfall of around 220 litres per square metre has been recorded in some areas. The councillor has stressed “the complexity of the municipal territory due to its large size and especially the areas of salt marshes and wetlands, which makes Elche a unique municipality, but at the same time makes it difficult to exterminate this type of pest”.
For his part, Hernández clarifies that the objective is not to eliminate the insect completely, but to control its population since it is essential to conserve biodiversity. “The problem is with some species of mosquitoes that hatch suddenly in salt marsh areas and, for this, larvicide treatments are used in order to eliminate a high percentage of the adult population,” said the biologist, who has appealed to citizen collaboration as there are a huge number of sources of hatching of these insects within private properties.
It is necessary to clean up and maintain them so that ponds, drums, pools or certain areas that can retain water do not become multipliers of such invertebrates.
Bernabéu assured that “Elche is currently prepared to compete with the main cities of Spain in terms of resources allocated to mosquito control”. Likewise, the manager of CTL has indicated that in parallel to this action an awareness campaign will be carried out so that the population keeps their plots healthy since the fight against mosquito infestations is a task that corresponds to the entire population and that benefits the citizenry as a whole.
