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Island businessman offers tick abatement system
September 8, 2005
By David Irland
A new company on the Island, Martha's Vineyard Deer and Tick Management, hopes to capitalize on the plentiful supply of Island ticks, particularly the notorious deer tick, known as a carrier of Lyme and other diseases.
Steven Anagnos of Oak Bluffs, owner since 1992 of the Island business Steve Anagnos Tree and Landscape, has developed a comprehensive tick abatement system combining elements already in use in other areas around the country.
Mr. Anagnos's service, which promises to reduce tick populations at specific properties through a multi-step process (described on the company web site MVdeertick.com), is a commercial tick abatement venture; previous Island efforts at control of Lyme-carrying deer ticks were research-oriented and did not involve individual property owners concerned with tick exposure. One such ongoing experiment was initiated last summer when Barnstable County Extension Service entomologist Dave Simser erected 15 so-called 4-Posters, baited feeding stations with insecticide applicators similar to a paint roller. These stations are designed to kill mature ticks as they feast on deer before dropping off and laying up to three thousand eggs. The results of the insecticide application system are not conclusive yet, though Mr. Simser hopes to increase the number of stations in continuing studies.
Sam Telford, associate professor at Tufts Veterinarian School and tick research specialist, was happy to see the new entrepreneurial spirit Mr. Anagnos brings to the world of tick abatement. "I think it's a fantastic thing. I've long said that one of the things that would help control these tick transmitted infections is if someone could find a way to make a buck off it." He joked that he'd tried to spread rumors that putting ticks in a bottle of liquor would have an aphrodisiac effect. "You could just see people going out there and collecting ticks," he said.
Part of Mr. Anagnos's tick abatement strategy is directed at ticks in an early stage of life, when they're larvae feeding on white-footed mice. The relatively new Maxforce Tick Management System, developed by the Centers for Disease Control and the pharmaceutical giant Bayer, uses feeding stations (described on maxforcetms.com) that are the best weapon developed so far, in the opinion of Mr. Anagnos. "They're flat, black boxes," he said. "It's Fipronil. Basically, you're treating mice with Frontline. We drop it right on their backs."
Mr. Simser, who's also worked with the Maxforce system, said that in his two-year study on the Island, the Maxforce feeding stations were able to cause a significant decline in the number of ticks counted on white-footed mice in field surveys.
Damminix tubes, another commercially available anti-tick device, are also offered by Mr. Anagnos. The biodegradable tubes are spaced at 15-foot intervals and filled with cotton balls treated with Permethrin (a tickicide). The cotton fiber is attractive to mice as a bedding material, and works to the extent that mice don't mix the cotton with other material such as leaves and grasses, according to Mr. Anagnos. However, Mr. Simser pointed out that chipmunks, which also carry deer ticks, "won't touch the stuff," and that the effectiveness of the tubes depends to some extent "on the diversity of the small mammal population."
Mr. Anagnos says the Damminix tubes help, but admitted they had mixed results in controlled testing. Mr. Telford said that the Damminix tubes in combination with the Maxforce mice feeding stations "have a very good basis for intervention. Damminix has been around for almost 20 years; why people don't use it more is not clear to me," though he cited expense as a possible factor.
The Maxforce system is only available through a licensed pesticide contractor, though the Times located Damminix for sale on the Internet at around $80 for 24 tubes, good for a half-acre lot; the tubes need to be renewed at 6 month intervals.
Spraying the perimeter of a property with pyrethroid insecticides — claimed safe for pets and humans — will kill ticks for approximately two months, another aspect of tick management Mr. Anagnos encourages, along with vegetation management, which in this case means clearing a three-foot or wider belt around a property to discourage tick occupation.
Both Mr. Telford and Mr. Simser approve of the clearing tactic. "I tried for years to get landscapers in Nantucket to adopt that idea," Mr. Telford said. "They thought I was crazy."
Keeping tick-infested deer off the property, or deer proofing, is another way to keep deer ticks out of your yard, and Mr. Anagnos uses a spray developed by the North American Deer Management Network (NADMN, or nadrp.com) to make landscaped vegetation unappealing to deer. Early trials, said Mr. Anagnos "were profoundly effective. Everybody tries their own witches brew or what not, but this stuff works."
Steve Masterson at the Polly Hill Arboretum, with whom Mr. Anagnos has worked on deer-proofing, said currently they use a different substance, Bobbex R, as a deer repellant, with some, but not 100%, success, though currently he's conducting trials of Mr. Anagnos's NADMN repellant, the results of which would not be available for another year, the time it takes to measure the results accurately. But he stressed that deer have an ability to adapt to bad tastes when trying to survive, an issue the NADMN web site addresses by saying that the contractors licensed by them will rotate the chemicals so the deer never get used to them.
Mr. Anagnos said that the cost of tick abatement at any particular property was impossible to nail down due to the variables involved, and the number of different methods a property owner had to choose among. He estimated it could cost as little as "a few hundred dollars for me to come in and spray the perimeter a few times a year, which would help. Or a few thousand, for a bigger property with Maxforce and the other systems. It really depends."
So far, Mr. Anagnos said, he's been promoting his tick abatement system since early summer, and has encountered skepticism. But having seen deer-proofing and tick abatement work in other areas, and having succeeded in tests of his own, he feels that the Island is a natural market.
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