About
Mosquitoes picked the wrong hill.
Mosquito season in DC is awful.
We’re done complaining about it.
The Itty Bitty Mosquito Committee is a grassroots neighborhood effort focused on spray-free mosquito prevention and control. We started with a simple listserv post in March 2026 in Capitol Hill, DC and heard back from over 1,000 households in the first week. Turns out we’re not alone in our suffering.
We’re inspired by the University Park Community Mosquito Control Program in nearby Maryland, which achieved meaningful reductions in mosquito populations through community participation rather than pesticide spraying. Spraying kills indiscriminately, wiping out the natural predators that keep mosquito populations in check, and populations bounce back fast. The lasting solution is to work with the ecosystem, not against it.
Our approach combines source reduction (tossing and treating standing water) and trapping with community education, native habitat investment, and coordination with DC Health, DC Department of Public Works, and other city partners.
Our goal is simple: reduce the mosquito population on our properties and in our neighborhood. The more neighbors participate, the more effective we all are.
New here? Start with our community kickoff
Hear the origin story, see traps in action, and get your questions answered.
Dr. Bart Knols, a world-leading mosquito researcher, explains the science behind why this approach works. It’s the fastest way to understand what we’re doing and why.
Researchers are starting to take notice
Community participation is essential for mosquito control, and notoriously hard to achieve. The level of engagement we’ve seen on Capitol Hill, and now across DC, has opened early conversations with researchers about whether this is an opportunity worth measuring and a model worth scaling. Nothing’s formal yet, but the interest is real.
We’re not scientists running a formal study, but we do have an unusually high concentration of data nerds, mapping gurus and public-health wonks in the neighborhood who saw an opportunity and couldn’t help themselves. So here we are.
In addition to taking action against mosquitoes this season, we’re also collecting data: trap locations, standing water reports, block captain coverage, surveys, and hopefully some mosquito counts. The goal is to understand how effective our collective effort is over a full season, build a case for future funding and city programming to expand what’s working, and create a model other communities can replicate.