Renewable Revolution

Tick Populations Booming
by John Soltes – July 28, 2015

As climates change, ticks spread farther north, harming dogs and humans

SNIPPET:

According to experts in the field, ticks have gone through some changes over the past few years.

“I think one of the biggest concerns that you see within the published literature for ticks is that ticks’ geographical regions are expanding,” said Dr. Janet Foley, a professor and researcher at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis. Foley, who studies the ecology and epidemiology of infectious diseases, also serves as co-director of the Center for Vector-Borne Diseases, an institution on the frontlines of tick and mite research.

“Clearly ticks are expanding farther north,” she said. “[W]e’re finding a lot of tick species moving into new areas. And a lot of that has to do potentially with climate change [and] animal husbandry practices if we’re cutting forests or recreating grasslands.… So as a whole ticks themselves are really becoming an emerging problem, not that they always weren’t anyway, but they are getting worse.”

Foley said the expansion of their range has brought them into Canada, and she called some of them “very, very aggressive human biters” that can potentially transmit disease.

http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/tick_populations_booming/