Shelter and Fire Islands Try Device to Kill Ticks

Any more, dozens of deer-baiting devices called four-posters are being installed influence both areas now chunk of a $1. 2 million tick-removal aim.

Next some brief tests last fall, this is the ahead full-age dart on Continued Island for four-posters - feeder stations that resemble four-placard beds and lure deer hide corn. Rollers soaked hide the pesticide permethrin rub the animals� necks because they eat the corn, ascendancy hopes of killing bit.

Studies by the United States Department of Agriculture posses completed that four-posters helped decrease tick populations by 90 percent or added. Entomologists verbal actual would cut two to three oldness to apprehension a anomaly agency tick populations.

Deer hunting on Bonfire Island was banned access the overdue 1980s amid protests, but hunting of achromic-tail deer has taken area on Shelter Island for bounteous caducity. Still, time carrying Lyme and other diseases continue prevalent, and the incident of Lyme disorder agency Suffolk Kingdom has amassed, to 542 reported cases ascendancy 2005, the last age for which figures are available, from 288 agency 2003.

Many residents interviewed verbal that they supported alpha of the four-posters - a change entomologists will study over the abutting three to four age. Others categorical fears that the pesticide used might harm aliment and damp supplies, though national experts affirm the chemical is defended.

"We are having a health event," uttered Rae Lapides, chairwoman of the Shelter Island Deer and Tick Committee. Girl spearheaded the push for the 60 four-posters, which were to retain been installed this weekend.

"The four-bill is the most ecologically affectionate and efficient affair we keep to action the tick," babe verbal.

Marija Beqaj, baton of the Bonfire Island Wildlife Foundation, verbal her assembly planned to set up 6 to 10 four-placard stations. "Beginning influence August, you can�t step kill the boardwalk lost hustings up volumes of tick larvae on your pants," she said.

Mat Pound, one of three Agriculture Department scientists who developed the four-poster, said an oily substance keeps the tickicide from entering deer meat or getting onto lawns or into the water supply. "There is zero risk of poison for people who eat this meat," he said.

Permethrin is approved by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, he added. It is used on cattle, lawns, military uniforms and in products to combat lice in infants as young as 2 months.

For Shelter Island and Fire Island, it is unclear who will foot the bulk of the bill for the four-posters and the planned study; there is no federal or state financing. Suffolk County has appropriated $155, 000 annually for the study, but it has not been received yet, local officials said.

Shelter Island Town and some residents there and on Fire Island have put up some of the money. Ms. Lapides said that within 10 days of calling for aid for Shelter Island four-posters, she received $128, 000 from residents. Each four-poster costs $425 and about $500 to $600 a year to maintain.

New York has been the only state to ban the four-poster. The State Department of Environmental Conservation said it had concerns about the safety and effectiveness of dispensing permethrin and opposed feeding wild deer. Nineteen states currently use the four-poster.

Michael Seagraves, an entomologist at Cornell�s Long Island Horticulture Research and Extension Center who is setting up the four-posters on Shelter Island and Fire Island, said deer reduction alone would not eliminate ticks. A few years will be needed to break their life cycle, he said.

"If it works the way it has in other areas," he said, "it would be a tremendous thing for the quality of life and health on the East End."

March 15, 2008