SAN JOSE (KCBS)  -- The tiny mosquito fish Santa Clara County vector control officials count on to control the mosquito population in abandoned pools also has a taste for tadpoles.

Unfortunately, environmentalists said, that appetite for amphibians includes the threatened red-legged frog (of Mark Twain fame) and the endangered Santa Cruz long-toed salamander.

“They’ll munch on anything that they can get ahold of that doesn’t eat them back, so to speak,” said Russ Parman with the Santa Clara County Vector Control District.

  KCBS' Matt Bigler reports

Thus was born a policy of not introducing the fish to natural bodies of water in order to preserve the local ecology. Mosquito fish have been used to control insects since the 1920s, but today, Parman said, they are only introduced to isolated backyard ponds and swimming pools that are not part of the “natural ecosystem.”

The risk to endangered species, he noted, pales compared to the potential harm of using pesticides to control the spread of West Nile virus.

(jro)