‘They’re everywhere’: Maine town blames nearby N.B. poultry farms for fly infestation
By Cameron French, CTVNews.ca writer
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Toronto, Ontario (CTV Network) — A small border town in Maine dealing with a nasty fly infestation is looking for answers, and a state official suspects the source lies in nearby Canadian poultry farms.
The fly problem has made life a challenge for residents of the town of St. Francis, reportedly covering screens and peppering windows, and making life difficult for anyone trying to enjoy the outdoors.
“They’re getting in the houses, they’re all over the doors and windows, they crawl all over you when you go outside. They’re everywhere,” local resident Jake Harvey, 42, told CTVNews.ca.
Harvey, who has resorted to using fly traps to try to deal with the problem, said the fly issue has been a recent phenomenon.
“I’ve been here five years, the last two years have been awful,” he said.
Like many in town, he suspects the reason for the swarms lies across the St. John River in poultry farms near the village of Saint-Francois-de-Madawaska, N.B.
“There’s really nowhere else it could be coming from. That’s the most common denominator,” he said.
Bill Sheehan, director of the Presque Isle office of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, agrees with him.
“There’s quite a few large poultry farms in St. Francoise. It’s a big poultry area,” said Sheehan, who was called in by local authorities to look into the infestation last week. “I’m just speculating, it’s just my guess based on geography.”
He said he has reached out to environmental authorities in New Brunswick to investigate the matter. An email sent by CTVNews.ca to the New Brunswick Department of Environment and Local Government seeking more information was not immediately returned.
He called the scale of the infestation “impressive.”
“There could be a metre square and you could have over a hundred flies at any one time. It’s extremely annoying,” he said. “One fly makes me annoyed, and you can imagine people trying to eat and having these flies around them in their houses.”
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