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> No standing water means no ideal spots to lay their eggs. In the ’60s, Potter accomplished this by digging drainage ditches built into the park’s base layers,

by kipple 5y ago

> No standing water means no ideal spots to lay their eggs. In the ’60s, Potter accomplished this by digging drainage ditches built into the park’s base layers, effectively draining the swamp in its entirety. Seems like this is the real meat, I wish the article had gone into more detail here.

zxcvbn4038 5y ago
The main gist is to keep the water moving which they do with a combination of levees, aerators, and architecture features designed so water runs off instead of pooling on walkways and buildings. Then they double down by stocking their water features with fish that particularly like to eat mosquito larvae. Then the finishing move is using a garlic oil infused spray to drive away the adults.
- loloquwowndueo 5y ago
  Aha, the garlic spray explains why the place is crawling with children but relatively few adults in sight. :)
  - timothyduong 5y ago
    I was wondering why I had the faint taste of garlic bread in my mouth when I was there...
- elihu 5y ago
  I don't know anything about how Disney does it aside from what I just read in the article, but mosquito fish I think are used in many places to get rid of mosquitoes. Guppies too, sometimes. I'm not sure if either is invasive in Florida. Mosquito dunks are another approach. Basically, they're floating donut-shaped things that release a bacteria that's specifically harmful to mosquito larvae. That worked really well for me last fall; I had made myself a koi pond, but there weren't any koi for sale at the time and the mosquitoes were only too happy to fill the ecological void.
  - sitkack 5y ago
    I think a lot of the industrial scale remediation for mosquitos also impacted the bird population. I have a Mosquito "pond" in the back yard and there is no noticeable increase in Mosquitos, for the most part they all get consumed by birds. There was an old woman who swallowed a fly and all the got in return was a lifeless terrarium with 100 species we call Earth.
jdgoesmarching 5y ago
Potter did what politicians could never.

by kipple 5y ago

zxcvbn4038 5y ago

The main gist is to keep the water moving which they do with a combination of levees, aerators, and architecture features designed so water runs off instead of pooling on walkways and buildings. Then they double down by stocking their water features with fish that particularly like to eat mosquito larvae. Then the finishing move is using a garlic oil infused spray to drive away the adults.

loloquwowndueo 5y ago
Aha, the garlic spray explains why the place is crawling with children but relatively few adults in sight. :)
- timothyduong 5y ago
  I was wondering why I had the faint taste of garlic bread in my mouth when I was there...
elihu 5y ago
I don't know anything about how Disney does it aside from what I just read in the article, but mosquito fish I think are used in many places to get rid of mosquitoes. Guppies too, sometimes. I'm not sure if either is invasive in Florida. Mosquito dunks are another approach. Basically, they're floating donut-shaped things that release a bacteria that's specifically harmful to mosquito larvae. That worked really well for me last fall; I had made myself a koi pond, but there weren't any koi for sale at the time and the mosquitoes were only too happy to fill the ecological void.
- sitkack 5y ago
  I think a lot of the industrial scale remediation for mosquitos also impacted the bird population. I have a Mosquito "pond" in the back yard and there is no noticeable increase in Mosquitos, for the most part they all get consumed by birds. There was an old woman who swallowed a fly and all the got in return was a lifeless terrarium with 100 species we call Earth.

jdgoesmarching 5y ago

Potter did what politicians could never.