Battle resumes against blood-suckers

DRUSKININKAI - As part of what has become an annual battle by southern Lithuanian environmental protection officials against swarms of blood-sucking midge flies, biological agents could be used along the upper Nemunas River in Belarus. But this would require approval by the environment ministers of both countries.

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Lithuanian spa resort town of Druskininkai, Algirdas Petkevicius, revealed the plan on May 10. The Lithuanian government finances the purchase of the biological agent Vecto Bac and the wider fly depopulation campaign, and has allocated $97,500 to destroy the midges this year.

The Druskininkai Environmental Protection Agency maintains contacts and coordinates action with colleagues in Belarus while it wages its yearly war against the insects along the region's rivers, streams and lakes.

A group of Lithuanian scientists visited Belarus on May 9 and brought back data on a stretch of more than 200 kilometers of the river Nemunas.

Petkevicius said that in order for the biological agents to do their job, some should be sprayed upriver in Belarus.

Belarusian environment officials have been unable to eradicate the flies this year. If the river midge flies are exterminated only on the Lithuania side of the border, swarms of the pests carried by the wind will easily enter the country from Belarus.

Midges hatch into larvae in mid-May in Lithuania. By the beginning of June they rise from the waterways, hungry for the blood of humans and animals. These are the swarming vampire flies' main victims.

Druskininkai, which is about 100 kilometers to the southwest of Vilnius close to the border with Belarus, has been especially hard hit by clouds of the insects in recent years.

The insects are said to have first arrived with imports of timber to the region from Siberia.