Wouldn’t you like a low-tech way to reduce the number of ticks carrying Lyme disease?

How about this: feeding stations that attract deer and then spray them with tick insecticide.

It sounds clever, and seems potentially useful, but it probably isn’t the answer – certainly not here.

Lyme disease is such a growing problem that any angle is worth pursuing, however.

“It’s a really appealing idea – that there’s a way to control ticks other than flying over an area and fogging it with pesticides,” said Bart Hoskins, wildlife biologist with the federal EPA. “… I have the feeling –
and most people in the field feel this way, I think – there probably isn’t a one-size-fits-all management approach for Lyme disease. “It’s probably going to require a mix of technology – that’s the way things are looking.”

Hoskins and other researchers are preparing a research paper on a multiyear study of such feeding stations on Cape Cod, as well as Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Those areas are rife with Lyme disease and are desperate for a ways to reduce the number of black-legged ticks, which carry the bacteria that causes the disease.

(They aren’t called “deer ticks” anymore because lots of other species, notably the white-footed mouse, carry the ticks.)

The work was started by the state and county; the EPA stepped in with funding to keep it going. The research paper is still being peer-reviewed, so Hoskins wouldn’t discuss results in detail, but he indicated the stations had a measurable impact on tick populations.

That sounds good, but there are lots more deer on Cape Cod and the islands than around here – a whopping 30-35 of them per square mile, around three times the density of Hillsborough County. So the results may not transfer.

Hoskins, whose official title is “ecological risk assessor,” is also interested in the project because it helps gather data about the complicated way the Lyme bacteria gets moved around.

As a rule, the black-legged tick picks up the bacteria – a spirochete, to get technical – as a larva from the blood of the white-footed mouse, which carries the bacteria. The tick drops off the mouse in the nymph or adult stage, grabs on to mammals and passes the bacteria along as it feeds on our blood (feel free to make vampire-movie noises).

Incidentally, infected people can’t pass the spirochete – not even via infected blood or sexual contact. The tick is the problem.

“In order to understand how to control this disease, you have to understand the ecology,” Hoskins said. “People say, ‘Let’s get rid of all the deer,’ or, “Let’s get rid of all the mice – let’s zero in on the chain and break the chain by breaking some part of it.’ So it’s important to know what the chain is in different locations.”

The important thing in the chain to note is that even if every deer in New Hampshire became tick-free, we could still get Lyme from ticks via the white-footed mouse.

A variant of the deer feeding station idea is available for ticks: cardboard tubes filled with cotton balls treated with permethrin, a tick insecticide. Mice take the cotton back to their nests as building material, and it kills the ticks.

Unfortunately, the population of white-footed mice has exploded in recent years for a variety of reasons, including the warming climate and the way we have carved up woods into housing lots, creating the perfect environment for mice. So it would take a lot of tubes to really make a dent, although it has been effective in some places, such as parts of Fire Island, N.Y.

Also of interest to public health researchers are two other diseases carried by the ticks and sometimes spread in conjunction with Lyme: anaplasmosis and babesiosis.

“There’s a surprising incidence of anaplasma (the bacteria that causes anaplasmosis) popping up in some of these locations,” Hoskins said. “Perhaps these others are emerging, the way Lyme disease did historically.”

As for the deer feeding stations, even if they reduce tick numbers, they have drawbacks. Wildlife officials frown on them because bringing deer together can spread diseases among them, such as chronic wasting disease, and can lead them to over-browse in the immediate area of the station.

So the real answer to my question is that yes, you’d like a low-tech way to reduce the number of ticks carrying Lyme disease, but it ain’t gonna happen.

GraniteGeek appears Mondays in The Telegraph. David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashuatelegraph.com. Also, follow Brooks on Twitter (@granitegeek).