October 10, 2012 - Canadian scientist Gerardo Ulibarri is ready to start marketing a mosquito trap he says can kill 90 per cent of the pests in a few months.
Canadian scientist Gerardo Ulibarri is ready to start marketing a mosquito trap he says can kill 90 per cent of the pests in a few months.
And they’re hoping you can help.
The Mosquito DMZ, as the Laurentian University professor and his partner Kris Holland call it, is the product of six years of research in Canada and Guatemala. No governments in Canada were providing research and development, money, however, so they have opened the door to crowdfunding. “The evidence is so overwhelming, we want to repeat it again next summer,” Ulibarri told the Toronto Star. He and Holland have discovered, after five years of trap use, that their northern Ontario properties have no signs of West Nile Virus mosquitoes.
As a scientist, however, Ulibarri still looks south with trepidation, to the dangerous outbreak in Texas this past summer of the neurological type of West Nile that killed 71 people.“Here in Canada, we have been lucky to be very low on neurological cases, but this tendency in the southern states is alarming to me. Because they are transported by migrating birds, any summer we could have an outbreak.” One trap, which fits in a five-gallon bucket, works in a backyard area using a naturally decomposing plant material designed to attract a specific species of female mosquito to lay her eggs.
Other larvae traps on the market use pesticides that can’t be recycled, said Ulibarri. What he discovered, almost by accident, was that the more his simulated swamp solution is used, the more it becomes irresistible to egg-laying females. The downside? “We need to make it less smelly.”
His work has been concentrating on the Culex mosquito, carrier of West Nile Virus, because of outbreaks in Ontario. Different solutions can be adapted to different species of mosquito, including those that carry the malaria virus so deadly to people in Africa. The UN Environmental Programme is interested in the Mosquito DMZ but needs something that costs about $20 a unit for use in the developing world, he said. To that end, Ulibarri and Holland have created a crowdfunding account at Indiegogo.com to raise $350,000 to get their trap into production in Canada by next summer. Proceeds from Canadian sales will help lower the costs for organizations such as the United Nations.
Ulibarri is also planning a double-blind controlled study of the traps with the Sudbury and District Health Unit next summer, although he, Holland and their friends have been trying the traps out themselves for years. Ulibarri admitted the long research time was “a bit of my fault.” He explained, “I wanted from the very beginning to make the manufacture right here in Canada. I had invitations to go to Michigan about four years ago. But this is Canadian technology, I am Canadian, I wanted to do this for Canada.”
Ulibarri also wants to develop an automatic trap that won’t require the weekly maintenance of the manual version and will encourage more people to use it.