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Hillsborough County holding free event Saturday marking 75 years of mosquito control

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Published  May 9, 2025 11:01am EDT
Hillsborough County
FOX 13 News
Mosquito management event in Hillsborough County

Mosquito management event in Hillsborough County

On Saturday, Hillsborough County Mosquito Control will host an event to show how the agency works to control the area’s mosquito population. FOX 13’s Kailey Tracy reports.

The Brief

    • On Saturday, Hillsborough County Mosquito Management Services is celebrating 75 years of working to control the mosquito population.
    • The free event runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at their headquarters located at 6527 Eureka Springs Rd. in Tampa.

TAMPA, Fla. - Whether we like it or not, mosquitoes are starting to become more of a nuisance, and it’ll only get worse as Florida’s rainy season ramps up.

Experts are hard at work now trying to control their spread.

On Saturday, Hillsborough County Mosquito Management Services is celebrating 75 years of working to control the mosquito population.

Mosquitoes (FOX 13 file)

The public can get an up-close look at what they’ve used in the past, present and future to fight mosquitoes.

Scientists, inspectors, helicopter pilots and educators will share how the program has evolved and where it’s headed. They’ll give tours of the facility, and the public can take pictures inside a Mosquito Management helicopter.

Dig deeper:

Some of those tools include using their 50 chickens for surveillance across the county. They test the chickens periodically for mosquito-borne illnesses, using them as a first line of defense to know if there’s a disease in the area. It doesn’t hurt the chickens, and they don’t get sick.

Hillsborough County tests chickens periodically for mosquito-borne illnesses.

Hillsborough County tests chickens periodically for mosquito-borne illnesses.

They also use the helicopter to spray products approved by the EPA in large areas that breed mosquitoes that they can’t get to in a truck. They target mosquitoes in their early stages to kill more at once too.

Pictured: Hillsborough County Mosquito Control Helicopter.

Pictured: Hillsborough County Mosquito Control Helicopter.

What they're saying:

"Think about if you've got a bucket full of mosquito larvae," Gabriela Henderson, Community Relations Coordinator for Hillsborough Mosquito Management, said. "You can dump it out, kill thousands of mosquitoes in one go, versus trying to take a fly swatter to thousands of mosquitoes in the air is a lot more complicated. So, we try to focus our efforts when they're in the early stages."

There are 30 mosquito traps throughout Hillsborough County that they keep tabs on too to track the mosquito population. Mosquito Management also raises their own mosquitoes to test and study, and they are working on a mosquito trap with USF that will use Artificial Intelligence to identify mosquito species as they fly into traps.

READ: Mosquito control discusses prevention strategies

There are about 45 different mosquito species in Hillsborough County, but only a couple carry diseases.

"It’s really nice to show people what we do to kind of update people’s ideas of what mosquito management is. Because, like I said, that old idea of the cloud of chemicals, we want to really focus away from that, because that's not really what we try to do. We try to attack the larvae when they're in that, the early stage," Henderson said.

"We want people to get a better understanding of how they can help us. For instance, we can treat as much as possible. We can go out and do all of these inspections. If you're still breeding mosquitoes at your place, if you're leaving lots of standing water, there's only so much we can do," she said.

What's next:

The free event runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at their headquarters located at 6527 Eureka Springs Rd. in Tampa.

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The Source: Information for this story was gathered by FOX 13's Kailey Tracy.

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