WINNIPEG (CBC) - When entomologist Taz Stuart joined the City of Winnipeg's insect-control branch, he intended to take a more environmentally friendly approach to the city's annual battle with mosquitoes - but somewhere along the way, his green plans got scaled back.

When he burst onto the scene in the spring of 2005, he was the toast of the city - a "rock star," in the words of Mayor Sam Katz.

Stuart came to Winnipeg after 12 years as entomologist in Regina, which stopped using chemicals to fight mosquitoes two decades ago. He was hired in Winnipeg, according to the job posting, to bring a similar "ecological approach" to the bug battle.

Stuart had a bold, three-year plan to cut down on the use of chemicals, promising to make the city's mosquito-larviciding program fully biological in 2007 by using minnows, dragonflies and biologically based products.

"When you do that, you get natural benefits - and actually over time your cost would decrease," Stuart said in 2005.

But today, Stuart concedes that two-thirds of the city's arsenal against mosquito larvae is still chemicals.

"It takes time. It takes money," he told CBC News. He wishes he could have reached the 2007 goal, but "that's just not feasible, and you go within your means."

Balancing concerns

Kelly Goldstrand, Stuart's boss as manager of the public service's community resource, protection and safety services division, says going green is expensive - plus there's the added pressure of public outcries for relief from mosquitoes, both because they're a nuisance and because they carry the potentially fatal West Nile virus.

"[We're] trying to balance citizen concerns about the use of chemicals and the concern about mosquito populations interfering with visitors and residents [and] ... a good summer here in Winnipeg," she said.

Coun. Gord Steeves, chair of the city's protection and community services committee, said going biological is still the city's goal.

"But on a year-to-year basis, trying to fit in everything we do from a budget perspective ... the money just hasn't been there ... to do the whole program," he said Thursday.

"The problem of course is that the biological compounds [are] a lot more expensive, and you have to apply it about twice as often, so there is a significant cost differential."

He estimated going completely biological would cost several million dollars a year.

Public ready

Glenda Whiteman, who has fought the use of chemical pesticides - particularly the use of malathion to kill adult mosquitoes - for years, says Winnipeg didn't give Stuart's new greener approach a chance, especially in the 2005 and the spring of 2007, when wet weather boosted mosquito counts.

"It was such a rainy year back then," she said. "I think there was just so much opposition to the new ideas. The public just wasn't ready for it.

"The ecological approach was quashed, and it hasn't come back. We haven't seen him try it again, and that's been really disappointing."

But Whiteman says the public is more environmentally aware now than it has been in previous years, so this is the year to get back on track with biologicals.

"I think the public is ready. I think the entomologist is ready. And it's just time to do it. And it's the perfect year to do it - everybody says we'll have low moisture count, so bring on the alternatives.

"People loved the dragon flies, the first year that they came in ... and the minnows, the damsel flies, and all the other alternatives. And they work. The problem with the dragonflies is they all die when they bring out the malathion gun."

Winnipeggers may, indeed, be becoming less likely to welcome the malathion trucks on their streets. In 2007, a record 1,389 residents registered for a 100-metre anti-malathion buffer zone around their property.

Stuart is optimisitic that with time and money, the city will make the program 100 per cent biological.

"We will get there, but down the road, of course," he said.

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