In what is the largest single commercial project of its kind, De Vere
Resort Ownership Ltd (DVROL), through MidMos Solutions Ltd, has recruited the UK’s leading biting insect expert, Dr Alison Blackwell, to help eradicate the Scottish summer midge blight at their new £50 million time ownership resort on the banks of Loch Lomond in Scotland.
Visitors to The Carrick at Cameron House on Loch Lomond, DVROL’s latest
five-star golf and leisure resort, will not need to pack the Avon Skin So
Soft – a travel essential for visitors to the west of Scotland in the summer – as the UK’s largest five-star timeshare operator has commissioned a £25,000 survey of the 300-acre site to combat the problem at source.
Dr Blackwell and her team took over 500 soil samples during March and April
2004 to determine the location of midge breeding grounds, which was key to
identifying potential nuisance areas, and discovered two high-risk areas and three medium-risk areas*.
Having assessed the midge hotspots, De Vere will spend £100,000 in the
installation of state-of-the-art devices from MidMos Solutions Ltd, a
subsidiary of Brandenburg UK Ltd, Europe’s leading manufacturer of
professional insect control systems, so that guests will be able to enjoy
their stay in a midge-free environment.
The Dragonfly Professional is a new technological development in the battle against midge and other biting insects. The ‘adaptable‘ product has been designed specifically to attract and kill biting insect [such as midge and mosquito]. Dragonfly Professional uses a control system that allows the trap to be adapted to provide optimum attraction to the specific problem biting insect, at the De Vere resort this is the midge. Carbon Dioxide, Octenol and a Thermal Lure are all used in combination to attract the female biting midge only to the trap, it does not attract and kill non-biting ecologically beneficial insect. By means of programmable electronic control Dragonfly Professional provides an efficient and
environmental solution that is optimised for attracting and killing biting
midge.
Craig Mitchell, managing director of DVROL, said: “Ensuring that our guests
get the most out of their time here is our main concern and we are prepared
to pay whatever price that security comes at. Midges can be a real menace
in this part of the world and can easily spoil what could otherwise have
been a memorable trip to Scotland.”
Dr Blackwell added: “In some parts of Scotland, we have found there to be
more than 50 million midges per hectare (0.01sq km) of land. Unsurprisingly, it is a big deterrent for tourists. The new machines will not affect the ecological balance of the site and we‘re only looking at very localised management, which will involve a very small proportion of the midge population in the area.
“The traps alone can‘t solve the problem, but we‘re aiming to integrate the
technological addressing with a educational/information service to the site
to make people more aware of the midge problem that exists and what they
can do about it.”
The Carrick at Cameron House will be located just over a mile north of De
Vere’s Cameron House Hotel and comprise 96 five-star time ownership
properties – 78 lodges and 18 apartments within mansion houses (a new
concept for De Vere Resort Ownership Ltd), a championship-standard
all-season golf course, world-class spa and extensive leisure facilities.
One third of the development will be committed to a nature reserve for the
protection and enhancement of local wildlife.
The full build schedule will be completed in 2006 with the first phase of
luxury two-, three- and four-bedroom lodges and the mansion houses
available for sale off plan in August.