A great helper in mosquito control: the New Taipei City Agriculture Department deploys paradise fish

(Taiwan Business News) The season of high dengue fever incidence has arrived again. Although the market already offers consumers a wide variety of mosquito repellents, when it comes to tackling the root of the epidemic, curbing the breeding of larvae is the key to a fundamental solution. The paradise fish, commonly known on the market as "three-spot fighting fish" or "Taiwan fighting fish", is a natural killer of larvae, feeding mainly on mosquitoes and other insects, with an average daily intake of more than three hundred.

The New Taipei City Agriculture Department has bred a total of 20,000 paradise fish this year. It has so far provided nearly 5,000 to groups including the city government's Environmental Protection Department, schools at all levels in New Taipei City and district offices to carry out the work of eliminating larvae, and members of the public or groups in need are also welcome to register to obtain them.

In the past, it could be found in ponds and still waters in western Taiwan and along the Lanyang River basin, but it once faced the fate of near extinction due to habitat destruction and the introduction of aggressive invasive species such as the Thai snakehead and the perch. After more than ten years of restoration work by the Agriculture Department of the New Taipei City Government, the paradise fish population has now steadily recovered. Since the 98th year of the Republic of China (2009), it has been removed from the list of "precious and rare protected wildlife", and in recent years it has not been difficult to spot these lovely visitors in ponds in the wild.