joe the tick

Written by Justin Reynolds, Mack Reid

A recent study of ticks collected in four nearby Fairfield County towns in 2008 and 2009 showed that 90% of them carried Lyme disease bacteria and 30% of them carried the parasites that cause babesiosis, a sometimes severe malaria-like disease that can be fatal.

Because there wasn’t money in the town budget for testing ticks that were collected in July at Slaughter Field in Wilton, no testing of those ticks was done, said Pat Sesto, Wilton’s director of environmental affairs and the chair of the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance. But testing of ticks caught in Bethel, Newtown, Redding and Ridgefield showed high instances of infection.

“It’s fair to assume we are no different,” Ms. Sesto said Tuesday. “Most definitely we should take lessons from these results. Information leads to better decisions, certainly. The more we know about the various diseases that the ticks carry, the better understanding we’ll have moving forward.”

Ms. Sesto said a Department of Environmental Protection fly-over of Wilton last winter pegged the deer population in town to be somewhere in the 60 to 64 deer per square mile range.

“If you want to cause the tick population to substantially subside, you want to be in the eight to 10 range,” she said.

Ms. Sesto said the removal of deer through controlled hunts is the best way to solve the tick problem.

“Our position, the best way to deal with the tick population is to deal with the deer population,” Ms. Sesto said. “If the tick doesn’t get the last blood-meal from the deer, it won’t lay eggs. The adult tick either lays her eggs and dies or dies without laying eggs.”

Ticks need to get the blood-meal from a large mammal, which is almost always a deer, according to Kent Haydock, public education chair of the deer management alliance.

Ms. Sesto said ticks can be removed through the spraying of pesticides, but that method has ill effects on the environment.

“This is a community that values clean ground water and clean surface water,” she said. “You’d need universal spraying of the town to get rid of ticks, but then you also get rid of other things, too.” Ms. Sesto said the removal of these insects and other species adversely affects the food web as well.

Ms. Sesto said controlled deer hunts — on both private and public land — are necessary for reducing the tick population. She said property owners interested in hooking up with hunters should call her office at 563-0180.

“Contact my office. We have a lot of hunters who call,” Ms. Sesto said. “Hunters are out there, but the opportunity to connect with private property owners is weak. We need to build up a system that helps that connection along. It’s something I’d guess the Deer Committee will be focusing on.”

Ms. Sesto said property owners might feel a bit apprehensive about dealing with hunters for the first time, but that they can call her and she would tell them what sort of questions they should ask the hunters.

“Hunters are conscientious,” she said. “Working with them, it’s new for me. But the stereotypes you see in television and in the cartoons — it’s not the case. These are really the guys next door, the normal dad down at the soccer field.”

Hunters must be licensed, Ms. Sesto said.

“The state has criteria of training and proficiency,” Ms. Sesto said. “Every year, you have to get permits from the state. Otherwise, you are poaching. You are breaking the law.”

The study

The University of New Haven study led by Dr. Eva Sapi was done under contract with the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance. The researchers collected 899 ticks from 15 locations in Ridgefield, Redding, Wilton, Bethel and Newtown from October 2008 to July 2009.

Overall, the study found 90% of the ticks tested were infected with the Lyme bacteria, with the range from 96% in Newtown to 88% in Redding.

The ticks collected in Ridgefield were not tested for the Lyme bacteria, but for the babesiosis parasite, Babesia microti. It was found in 33% of the ticks, far higher than the previously reported levels of 5% to 8%.

Combining results from all towns on the babesiosis parasite, the study found a 30% infection rate with a range from 28% in Newtown to Ridgefield’s 33%.

A different study by Columbia University researchers on ticks collected in nearby Westchester County, New York, 65% of ticks infected with the Lyme bacteria, Borrelia burgdorferi, and a total of 72% to ticks infected with either Lyme or one of four other tick-borne diseases.

The New York study found 32% of ticks infected with more than one pathogen.