Last year the Peninsula saw hordes of mosquitoes due to the wet spring and hot summer, but due to our relatively dry spring there may not be as many this summer.
Entomologist Matt Bowser with the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge said according to his collecting last summer it was due to a particular snow melt pool species.
Bowser: “There are mosquitoes here that have different life cycle strategies and it was the snow melt pool mosquitoes that depend on that early spring, those vernal pools from snow melt in the forest that they were having so many of, those were the numbers that we had lots of last year.”
He said this spring has been much different.
Bowser: “The pools are much smaller or dried up already or a lot of them are so I think we’ll see a lot fewer of those kinds of mosquitoes.”
Bowser said in years like last year, animals are bothered by the swarms just as much as we are.
Bowser: I know someone else working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife services trying to solve problems with endangered Whooping Cranes who are being chased off their nests by black flies and mosquitoes can do the same kind of thing I would imagine and make life very difficult for some of our wildlife.”