Mosquitoes are hardly endearing. On a hot, humid summer day, the insects are out looking for their next meal. But mosquitoes aren't always the hunters.

"They are a food source for a number of different organisms, certain dragonfly nymphs, damselfly nymphs..."

Joe Conlon is technical advisor for the non-profit health education group, the American Mosquito Control Association.

"However, they don't constitute the preponderance of any animals. You know, like bats would do perfectly well without them, purple martins, etcetera etcetera."

Conlon says controlling mosquito populations is a difficult job. But the recent occurrences of West Nile Virus in the United States have awakened a lot of people to the idea that mosquitoes are more than a simple nuisance. They can carry deadly diseases, including West Nile Virus and malaria.

"You have upwards of 3-million people a year dying of malaria with another 450 to 600-million actually being infected by it. One of 17 children that are going to die this year in the world are going to die of malaria."

Conlon says it would be nearly impossible... and prohibitively expensive to wipe out mosquitoes. But he says controlling the pests is a manageable task. Keeping bushes trimmed, picking up discarded tires and other containers for rainwater, and wearing bug repellant are all ways to minimize bug-bites without relying on pesticides.

More information's available on the web at GreenWorks.tv. I'm Brad Linder.