The Real Enemy

For people who live in tick-infested areas — that’s most of the East End — the illnesses they carry are a constant, serious threat: not just Lyme disease but babesiosis, ehrlichiosis and others. Every year, new arrivals are introduced to the danger, sometimes the hardest way possible.

Dramatically reducing the tick population should be a public health priority. Widely spraying chemicals and controlled burns aren’t practical. More strategic methods must be deployed — if they exist. When we find one, it should be full-steam ahead.

North Haven Village would like a word.

It has been using a “4-poster” system in recent years: a portable deer feeding station with four upright paint rollers soaked in a permethrin solution, which kills ticks on the heads and necks of deer as they feed on cracked corn. Developed by U.S. Department of Agricultural scientists in the 1990s, they have been the subject of a number of studies over the years, including one on Shelter Island from 2007 to 2011. There, the program deployed 60 stations and decimated what had been a robust tick population — and, according to anecdotal evidence, slashed a high rate of tickborne infections.

Bet you’ve never heard of that study. There was very little buzz about it beyond Shelter Island. Even on the island, the program was continued locally, but at a much smaller scale, with less success as a result.

Across the South Ferry channel, North Haven is the only other municipality on Long Island to try its own 4-poster program, putting out up to 17 units over the past seven years on public and private land. Last month, village residents got the first anecdotal word that their 4-poster program had worked through 2020, and that ticks seem to be rebounding now that the program has been scaled back.

The stations are expensive. They need special state permits. A few won’t do the job — they must be deployed in significant numbers, and work best in a contained, well-defined territory. But they are extremely precise and limited in their pesticide targeting, reducing the environmental impact. And, crucially, they really do seem to work.

The State Department of Environmental Conservation has never been a fan: The “off-label” use of permethrin, combined with “baiting deer,” something hunters are forbidden to do, have made the DEC unwilling partners. A new rule, requiring all property owners within 745 feet of any station — 100 percent of them — to sign off, hobbled the North Haven program.

Until now, the focus has been on ridding communities of deer to rid them of ticks. It’s time for officials, both here and in Albany, to change that thinking. Killing all the deer is simply not feasible. The ticks are the bigger enemy, the bigger health crisis, and 4-poster programs appear to show promise in controlling them.

The DEC should lift the ridiculous new rule. Moreover, it’s time for a bigger strategic deployment of 4-poster stations to see if this is a health crisis that, with swift action, we actually can eliminate.