A highly invasive plant that forms dense canopies in forests – particularly those with high deer populations that eat most every other plant – Japanese barberry also creates moist, cool shelters that harbor ticks that carry the Lyme disease bacteria.
In latest in the ongoing battle in the press between the “Bambi killers” and the “animal rights activists” the Greenwich Time editors write that they are skeptical about the recent study — The ‘Economic Impact of Deer Overpopulation in Fairfield County, CT.
The region’s overpopulation of deer cost Fairfield County towns more than $170 million a year in health care costs from tick-borne Lyme disease, car repairs and landscaping, according to a groundbreaking report bound to spark further debate on the issue of suburban hunting. via Excess deer population has its costs – Connecticut Post.
Lyme disease, the tick-borne ailment once primarily a scourge of the Cape and Islands, is now rampant in swaths of Massachusetts where locally acquired cases were rare a decade ago. In Middlesex, Norfolk, and Worcester counties, the number of patients diagnosed with the bacterial disease surged more than fourfold between 2000 and 2009, according to
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Some medical experts go so far as to dispute the very existence of chronic Lyme disease, according to Dr. Kotsoris. One consequence of this controversy is less than robust funding for research that could offer answers and solutions to the burgeoning number of Lyme disease sufferers. According to recent statistics from the Centers for Disease
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Ridgefield had the highest number of deer deaths in the state last year at 416. Wilton, a town that had a controlled hunt for about eight years, once held the number 1 spot and has dropped to 32. Deer Committee Chair Tom Belote believes that shows that the hunt is having an effect on bringing
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“It’s all in your head” is what some Lyme disease patients hear when they tell doctors about their persistent fatigue, pain, and cognitive problems.”Lyme disease can present in myriad ways,” says Dr. Harriet Kotsoris, neurologist and medical advisor to Time for Lyme, a Greenwich, CT-based research, education and advocacy group. “The result is that it
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