Posted on 02/25/2010 1:13:01 PM PST by decimon
A domestic ecological mystery
IMAGE: Research assistant Rachel Katz drags for ticks in the Ozarks. The drag cloth takes advantage of the ticks' natural host-seeking behavior, called questing. Ticks climb to the top of grass... Click here for more information.
Stories of environmental damage and their consequences always seem to take place far away and in another country, usually a tropical one with lush rainforests and poison dart frogs.
In fact, similar stories starring familiar animals are unfolding all the time in our own backyards — including gripping tales of diseases jumping from animal hosts to people when ecosystems are disrupted.
This time we're not talking hemorrhagic fever and the rainforest. We're talking tick-borne diseases and the Missouri Ozarks.
And the crucial environmental disruption is not the construction of roads in the rainforest, it is the explosion of white-tailed deer populations.
An interdisciplinary team at Washington University in St. Louis has been keeping a wary eye on emerging tick-borne diseases in Missouri for the past 20 years. Team members include ecologists Brian F. Allan and Jonathan M. Chase, molecular biologists Robert E. Thach and Lisa S. Goessling, and physician Gregory A. Storch.
The team recently developed a sophisticated DNA assay, described in the March 2010 issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases, that allows them to identify which animal hosts are transmitting pathogens to ticks.
"This new technology is going to be the key to understanding the transmission of diseases from wildlife to humans by ticks," Allan says.
>
"If you had to point to one factor that led to the emergence of tick-borne diseases in the eastern United States, it would have to be these unnaturally large populations of deer," Allan says.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
Ticked off ping.
Just about any neighborhood here in central Texas has a deer problem.(too many)
If these deer are carrying ticks (which they always seem to do) these neighborhoods are ripe for these diseases to spread.
Imagine your kids playing in a yard where the deer having been grazing/sleeping.
I don’t want the ticks, but I would like to have more of the deer in New Mexico. We have huge elk populations and small deer populations. I’ve heard of the elk carrying chronic wasting disease, but haven’t heard anything about tick related diseases.
It is bad in west Tennessee. It was not like this back in the 60s when I was a kid. The only ticks we would get on us were the big seed tick variety. Now with the “standing room only” deer population we have these teensy tiny ticks that you may not find on yourself for days afterward. I try to stay out of the woods unless it is a cold winter’s day.
How are these populations unnatural, are they being cloned? Or are we talking about too much human meddling and mis-management?
After the first freezing temperatures is what I hear. Don't know if that's true.
Yes. Not all intentional, though. We eliminate predators and then limit hunting to where there are too many deer.
I remember when Whitetails were fed over the winter to keep their numbers up. That seems absurd today.
Sad indeed, in Northeast California, Modoc County plenty of deer and hunting…without this lunacy, time to stop all the feel good mismanagement; estimated numbers should be managed not by a governmental agency or political NGO, and turned over to a for profit group to be managed appropriately; as with Ducks Unlimited conservation is about making sure there is enough for ecology and hunting.
Not just deer, your pet dog or cat, the birds, cows are all carrying the tick and dropping them into your environment. Bantam chicken, guinne (?) hens will feed on ticks, also a perimeter spraying of your yard will do away with most of them. Yes, the teeny tiny ticks will give you Lyme’s disease, and winter season doesn’t kill them either. They burrow underground. Diligence will keep them away, frequent lawn mowing.
Dog collars don’t seem to be effective, but neither is culling a herd of deer, humans also can transport the tick. Duct tape with sticky stuff on outside of boots will catch them before you can, they are here in NJ too.
I’m not worried about the ticks, I’m worried about one of them killing me on the road!
Blood Meal Analysis to Identify Reservoir Hosts for Amblyomma americanum Ticks(pdf)
Emerging Infectious Diseases comes from the CDC. Increased tick borne disease is attributed to anthropogenic environmental change, but here it's different from AGW.
I live in an area where they monitor and cull the deer population. The deer are field dressed and given to the homeless kitchens.
It takes all my strength to teach my employees to NOT encourage people to feed the “starving” deer.
The feel good feed the deer types are some of the most headstrong I’ve ever attempted to deal with. They just don’t want to accept the deer are overpopulating whether they have woodland habitat or suburban habitat. It has been reported there are more deer in our area than there was in colonial times! It is not about us moving in and taking their habitat away. The suburban environment has actually facilitated the population growth and the lack of large predators ....well...boom.
People get shocked when they learn they can’t trap, remove, and release raccoons. All raccooons must be released back on your property or euthanized. They are up some 800%.
Unintended consequences of feel good politics. Eh...keep it.
bump
Ping....(Thanks, neverdem!)
A few seasons of this should thin the deer out.
We are over run with deer here in Indiana County, Pa. And last year was the worst for ticks that I have seen.
Where they are overrunning the place. And that seems to be a lot of places.
I haven't seen any deer ticks where I am in lower New York and this is Lyme Disease territory. Could be my bird feeders. I get various ground feeders including turkeys. Some people in the area keep Guinea Fowl.
We had a 9 year old girl killed last week when a dear when through the front windshield. And I have a good friend who totaled her car this weekend when she hit a deer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.