Fight Lyme Disease

[awndray]

I don't know why I hadn't seen this before now, but I'm glad I did. Thank you, Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters and Great North Wildlife Affiliates.

https://www.ofah.org/membership/insu...ease-coverage/

[rf2]

Recent article on ticks in the Ottawa area:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...read-1.4850613

[awndray]

Researchers across New England and Canada scramble to protect the iconic species from growing parasite populations

Amid lightly falling snow on a gray April morning, Lee Kantar crouches over a dead moose calf. Its head rests on the ground and its legs are tucked beneath its frail torso. A GPS collar Kantar had strapped around its neck in January pinged his phone the night before, signaling the calf had not moved in more than six hours and was likely dead. “Nose is normal. Eyes are normal. Ears are normal—quite a bit of ticks on her ears,” Kantar calls off to his field assistant, Carl Tuggand, who records the data on a clipboard. “There are a lot of ticks on her.”

Responding to tick-covered dead moose has become a regular springtime routine for Kantar; as Maine’s official state moose biologist at its Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, he has strapped necropsy equipment to his snowmobile and bushwhacked through dense forests dozens of times over the past five years. He is studying how growing infestations of winter ticks have seized entire populations of this iconic animal. As climate change shortens winters and improves living conditions for these ticks—which do not carry Lyme or other human-harming diseases—their population size and range have begun to expand. Now scientists in Canada have embarked on a similar five-year study in New Brunswick and Quebec to document how moose there are being affected as the raisin-size parasites spread northward. The researchers seek to slow this expansion and figure out ways to bolster moose populations. For eastern Canada, “it’s a new phenomenon,” says study leader Steeve Côté, a biologist at Laval University in Quebec City, “and people are highly concerned about it.”

Read the rest of the article here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...ain-moose-dry/

[MarkB]

I'm sorry but having read the action plan it sounds good to me. How would you like it to be changed?
Anyone who hangs out in the bush is aware of the dangers of the deer tick to themselves and their dog. Ticks have been around forever and can't be totally "fixed". This is why we use a monthly pesticide on our dog and check ourselves over thoroughly.

( Not all deer ticks carry the lyme disease .)

I'm getting them at my house, southern Ontario, against Lake O. Not just a deer hunting thing anymore.

[gonzo]

The only proven method of control of ticks and avoid lyme disease is .5% permethrin

https://thekoregarden.org/product/ga...y-insecticide/

"The Kore Garden" ships across Canada. The product they sell is 1.5% concentrate, so after diluting with water you will have enough permethrin to soak several items of clothing and you can spray the stuff on your gear so you don't pick up any hitchhikers. Once Permethrin dries, it is no longer toxic to humans.

In Ontario, Canada the tick population is getting out of hand.
I use this all the time to treat clothes, as Im active all summer in the bush, and trust me DEET is not effective!
This work on ticks, mosquitoes, black flies, bed bugs and many more creepy crawlers

[Fisherman]

Although previously reported, CTV had a health clip tonight indicating pregnant women can pass lyme disease to their unborn. That is nasty when mothers don't even know they have it.