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Tackling Ticks & Lyme Disease, Romaine Pushes For $$ For 4-Poster Program
By:Robert Wargas
02/27/2008




IN AN EFFORT to combat Lyme disease, Suffolk County Legislator Ed Romaine is asking for funding to move forward with a tick eradication project. Pictured are two deer eating from a “4-Poster” feeding station.
County Legislator Ed Romaine (R-Riverhead) has declared war on Lyme disease, taking the fight to Shelter Island by asking the county for $155,000 to kick off a four-year tick eradication project there.


The bid comes a year after Romaine secured $155,000 from the county to establish a Tick Management Task Force in an effort to prevent Lyme disease and other tick-related illnesses. He's now asking for the same amount this year to continue efforts in controlling this problem.
The project has two parts: a study with Cornell Cooperative Extension that will assess the deer population and an elimination phase that will target ticks on deer through use of the "4-Poster" program. Though the focus is Shelter Island, the project will extend to other tick-ridden areas like Fire Island and the village of North Haven.
Romaine said he plans to ask the county for $155,000 each year to continue the project. If successful, the efforts could reduce the tick population by as much as 90% over the next three years, he said.
"I think this is a reasonable request," he said. "The amount of tick-borne diseases out here is incredible."
The 4-Poster program works by luring deer to feeding stations filled with corn feed. In order to eat the corn, a deer must pass its head through chemical-soaked applicators, coating its head and neck with a tickicide that kills attached ticks and wards off others.
Most ticks congregate around a deer's head and neck, according to the Shelter Island Deer and Tick Committee. Because 95% of adult female ticks feed on deer before laying their eggs, killing them at that stage reduces repopulation.
Shelter Island always has been a hotbed for ticks, but in recent years their numbers have swelled because of an overpopulation of deer, according to Shelter Island Town Supervisor James Dougherty. He said residents of the 12-square-mile island can be covered in ticks after everyday activities like gardening, and the risk of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses is an ever-growing threat.
"We have a health menace here, especially for our young kids," he said.
The project already is underway. Scientists from Cornell Cooperative Extension have begun to capture and study the deer, Dougherty said, and within a month the town will begin adding more 4-Poster stations.
Though ticks can transfer many diseases, the most common and most well-known is Lyme disease. The symptoms of Lyme disease vary widely, and they often worsen over time if the condition goes untreated, said Eva Haughie, president of the Empire State Lyme Disease Association. In the early stages of the illness, those who have been infected often experience muscle aches, joint pain, fatigue, fever and headache, in addition to a distinctive red rash around the bite area.
Symptoms can appear weeks or even months after a bite from an infected tick, Haughie said, but it is most common to become ill after a few days.
Since Lyme disease symptoms often closely mimic those of other diseases, sufferers have been misdiagnosed with conditions as varied as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, menopause, clinical depression, Alzheimer's disease and Lou Gehrig's disease, Haughie said.
And although flu-like symptoms are the most common, the Empire State Lyme Disease Association lists a host of others that may pop up at any stage of the infection, among them facial paralysis, heart murmur, disorientation and obsessive compulsive disorder.
In the "Tick Management Handbook," considered an authoritative source by officials dealing with this problem, Connecticut entomologist Dr. Kirby Stafford writes that there are about 865 tick species worldwide, 80 of which have appeared in the United States. There are at least 11 tick-borne illnesses in the US, according to Stafford. Aside from Lyme disease, cases of babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, tularemia and Rocky Mountain spotted fever are common.
Despite being the most infamous of the tick-related plagues, Lyme disease is relatively young, having been first diagnosed in 1975, Haughie said. "We're in the infancy of this disease," she said.
The American Lyme Disease Foundation considers Long Island to be a "high risk" location for Lyme disease. As of now, Romaine said Suffolk County Vector Control spends more than $2 million a year to mitigate mosquito problems but hasn't attempted to develop a game plan for tick eradication.
"It's endemic here in Suffolk County," said Haughie. Her own brush with Lyme disease resulted in a near-death experience. After doctors failed to diagnose the illness accurately, her condition worsened, and she soon was unable to speak from advanced encephalitis, but antibiotic treatment eventually brought her back to health.
She said it is never too late to get treatment for Lyme disease, but many die from the illness because it is often not caught in its early stages. "You can be walking around with symptoms and not even know it," she said.
Last year, many 4-Poster feeding stations were placed around parts of Shelter Island, according to former Shelter Island Town Supervisor Alfred Kilb, Jr. Mostly, they are placed on publicly owned land. The town must ask the permission of private property owners if the stations need to be placed on their land. In addition, Kilb said other states have used the 4-Poster program successfully.
"It's something that's worthy of a try," he said. "I don't think anyone realizes what the long-term use may be."
Permethrin, the chemical used on the feeding stations, is commonly used as an insecticide and insect repellent, Kilb noted. The Department of Environmental Conservation last year granted a special permit allowing the chemical's use in the project. Officials also had to obtain permission to use the 4-Poster feeding stations since the DEC normally prohibits feeding wildlife.
The Shelter Island Deer and Tick Management Foundation estimates that the town may need as many as 80 4-Poster feeding stations to reduce the tick population.
So far, in addition to county funding, the tick eradication project has received a $65,000 donation from the town of Shelter Island and a $27,000 contribution from the Fire Island Wildlife Foundation, Romaine said. He also is seeking aid from the state.
Haughie said she supports the use of the 4-Poster program, but other solutions should be considered as well, since research shows that deer aren't the only tick carriers. Shrews and mice are known to carry infected ticks. "There is no cookbook answer to this," she said.

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