Wetlands are valuable habitats that provide important social, economic, and ecological services such as flood control, water quality improvement, carbon sequestration, pollutant removal, and primary/secondary production export to terrestrial and aquatic food chains. There is disagreement about the need for mosquito control in wetlands and about the techniques utilized for mosquito abatement and their impacts upon wetlands ecosystems. Mosquito control in wetlands is a complex issue influenced by numerous factors, including many hard to quantify elements such as human perceptions, cultural predispositions, and political climate. In spite of considerable progress during the last decades, habitat protection and environmentally sound habitat management still remain inextricably tied to politics and economics. Furthermore, the connections are often complex, and occur at several levels, ranging from local businesses and politicians, to national governments and multinational institutions. Education is the key to lasting wetlands conservation. Integrated mosquito abatement strategies incorporate many approaches and practicable options, as described herein, and need to be well-defined, effective, and ecologically and economically sound for the wetland type and for the mosquito species of concern. The approach will certainly differ in response to disease outbreaks caused by mosquito-vectored pathogens versus quality of life issues caused by nuisance-biting mosquitoes. In this contribution, we provide an overview of the ecological setting and context for mosquito control in wetlands, present pertinent information on wetlands mosquitoes, review the mosquito abatement options available for current wetlands managers and mosquito control professionals, and outline some necessary considerations when devising mosquito control strategies. Although the emphasis is on North American wetlands, most of the material is applicable to wetlands everywhere.

Durable materials for Nzi traps were tested in three applied settings based on promising formats that were tested first in Canada. Experiments were conducted at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, United States of America at the site of a major tabanid control programme and at two challenging tropical locations (Sudan and Philippines) where mechanical transmission of trypanosomiasis occurs. At Cape Cod, royal blue–painted plywood Nzi traps caught up to 19 times as many tabanids as greenhead box traps used locally did. Fabric Nzi traps caught up to six times more horseflies, Tabanus spp. (Diptera: Tabanidae), than a box trap did and twice as many horseflies than a popular commercial trap, the Horse Pal® did. A home-dyed phthalogen turquoise cotton trap also performed well. In the Philippines, it caught 2.5 times as many Tabanus as a standard phthalogen blue cotton trap did. Durable phthalogen blue Sunbrella acrylic and Top Notch polyester traps with various types of netting performed well at all locations.