To the Editor:
In a time when both bad news and precipitation come packaged in deluge form, I’d like to push back on some bad news people may have encountered this summer about ticks. In particular, a prominent article in the New York Times last month entitled “The Summer the Ticks Took Over” might make people think twice about visiting a nature preserve or even daring to step outside. To the deer tick that can spread Lyme disease has been added the lone star tick that can cause alpha-gal syndrome.
My experience — spending long hours removing invasive species and tending to trails at Princeton’s Herrontown Woods nature preserve — tells a much different story. It’s not only the good bugs like pollinators that are in decline. In my experience so are ticks, house ants, and spotted lantern flies. I work on-trail and off without much precaution and without apparent consequence. Tick checks come up empty. Similarly, the odorous house ants stopped invading our house several years ago. Spotted lantern flies, the oft-mentioned invader of recent years, have grown scarce in my part of town.
The curious paucity of ticks goes beyond my observations. Other land stewards in our nonprofit Friends of Herrontown Woods also report few if any ticks this year. One day I met two women who had driven from Long Island to Princeton’s Herrontown Woods to take a walk in the woods. Their reason? Fewer encounters with ticks, which are way too numerous on Long Island.
Does this good fortune extend to Princeton generally? I reached out to Jeffrey Grosser of the Municipality of Princeton Health Department, who reported that the numbers of tick-borne diseases in Princeton and our region are generally lower. There were no confirmed cases of alpha-gal last year.
If tick numbers and tick-borne diseases are down in Princeton, it likely arises out of factors both intended and serendipitous. Beginning in 2001, then Mayor Marchand and other courageous leaders instituted a combination of bow hunting and professional culling to significantly reduce the deer herd. The backlash from animal rights advocates made it into the New York Times, but failed to overcome broad community concern about the high incidence of collisions with deer on the roadways. The venison goes to food pantries, and fewer deer also means more native plants surviving in the woods.
In addition, local predators have upped their game. Foxes are particularly adept at reducing the number of mice that serve as a reservoir for the Lyme disease microbe.
Though people should still be vigilant, a combination of government action and ecological factors has made ticks far less of a menace in Princeton than scary news stories would have us believe.