To the Editor: 

Thank you to Claire Seguin and Jacob Lemieux (“A new public health threat is emerging — and we can still get ahead of it,” May 28) for focusing attention on the ongoing urgency of finding solutions to the decades-old prevalence of tick-related illness here. Alpha-gal is the latest, but there are others which local physicians have confessed that the medical profession has yet to identify.

I wanted to bring attention to a potential solution that a friend, Tom Sullivan, now passed, brought to light back in 2017. He was scientifically inclined, did some research, and found an article dated June 18, 2012, from the National Academy of Sciences, “Deer, Predators, and the Emergence of Lyme Disease.”

The article states, “Reductions in small-mammal predators can sharply increase Lyme disease risk … particularly the decline of a key small-mammal predator, the red fox.” Tom said that a fox population had existed on the Island that was killed off in the 1950s. Red foxes are a key predator of rodents, and it is the white-footed mouse that is a critical host in infecting ticks with the Lyme disease bacterium in the first place.

He suggested we “consider a pilot program using sterile, radio-monitored red foxes as a temporary biological control to bring our overabundant, infectious-disease-carrying rodent population back into ecological balance.”

I dislike overblown clichés as much as logos on clothing, but it really is getting to an existential tipping point as far as quality of life. 

We Islanders are weary of arming ourselves for battle in order to work in our gardens, tired of being fearful of accidentally brushing up against beach grass, saddened that we can’t allow our toddlers to tumble in the grass.

We are sick of being sick. 

We have been ground zero for these maladies for more than 40 years now. I am not a scientist, but I join with many who have suffered the challenging effects of these illnesses to entreat those in the scientific community to prioritize finding a solution, to think outside the box, and to explore all options in mitigating this ever-advancing plague among us.

Susan Puciul
Chilmark

2 replies on “The red fox solution?”

  1. Thank you Susan for bringing this to our attention. Perhaps some of the recently announced Federal money for tick research could be funneled into exploring further the research on red foxes, as a mouse deterrent, done by my late husband, Tom Sullivan.

  2. Ground birds help with tick control. But probably a red fox would target the nest. I wonder which animal would eliminate more ticks.

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