Disease-carrying mosquitoes have spread to the Rocky Mountains

This story is original appeared on Inside climate news It is part of Climate Office cooperation.

They can carry life-threatening diseases. It is difficult to find and difficult to kill. She is obsessed with human blood.

Aedes aegypti is a species of mosquito that people like Tim Moore, director of Colorado’s Western Slope Mosquito Control District, don’t want to see.

“Boy, they’re limited to humans,” Moore said. “This is their blood meal.”

This type of mosquito is native to tropical and subtropical climates, but as temperatures rise and rainfall patterns are distorted by climate change, Aedes aegypti — which can spread Zika, dengue, chikungunya and other deadly viruses — is on the move.

They appear throughout the Mountain West, where conditions have historically been too harsh for them to survive. In the past decade, cities in New Mexico and Utah They’ve started catching Aedes aegypti in their traps year after year, and just this summer, one was found. First time in Idaho.

Now, an old residential neighborhood in Grand Junction, Colorado, has emerged as one of the newest areas inhabited by these pesky mosquitoes.

The city, with a population of about 70,000, is the largest in Colorado west of the Continental Divide. In 2019, the local mosquito control district spotted a stray Aedes aegypti in a trap. It was strange, but the mosquitoes had actually been found in Moab, Utah, about 100 miles to the southwest. Moore, the area manager, believed they had caught a hitchhiker and that Colorado’s harsh climate would quickly wipe out the species.

“I figured it was a one-off and I didn’t need to worry too much about it,” Moore said.

Managing a new species of invasive mosquito in Grand Junction required the district to spend more on new mosquito traps and staff, explains Tim Moore, director of the Grand River Mosquito Control District.Photo: Isabella Escobedo