Katherine Whitney

Apr 20, 2025

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Killing Deer Not the Best Strategy In Battle Against Lyme Disease

When I saw the article in Bar Harbor Story about LD 1438, a bill introduced by Representative Faulkingham of Winter Harbor, I felt as if I was experiencing deja vu. In the not so distant past, the voters of Bar Harbor thought they had put the question of legalizing deer hunting to bed with a decisive no at the ballot box.

From the many hours spent attending town council and deer task force meetings, speaking with local biologists, conducting online research and composing LTEs, I discovered that one of the common arguments used by proponents of legalizing deer hunting is that a reduction of the local deer population will reduce the cases of Lyme disease.

Well, what if one of the leading scientists on the Blacklegged tick, more commonly known as the deer tick (quite unfortunate for the poor deer), told you that long-term data show that the number of Lyme-infected ticks are more correlated with the number of white-footed mice than the number of deer?

Dr. Richard Ostfeld is a disease ecologist who has been studying the Blacklegged tick for over 25 years at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York State. According to Dr. Ostfeld, deer are not the actual problem because they don’t transmit Lyme disease bacterium or other tick borne pathogens. Dr. Ostfeld says that rodents such as the white-footed mouse and the eastern chipmunk are “high-quality hosts” for ticks because the ticks not only feed on them, but they also contract the tick-borne pathogens, and those pathogens are then transmitted to other ticks that feed off of them. This keeps the spread of Lyme disease going. Coyotes, foxes, and bobcats are some of our best friends in the fight against the spread of Lyme disease because they keep the rodent population in check and that means fewer “high quality hosts.”

Currently, at the state level, there is a bill: LD 1293 “An Act to Prohibit Coyote-Killing Contests” that is working its way through the legislature. It is important that you contact your state senator and representative as soon as you can about this issue, because we need to protect one of our most important allies in the fight against the spread of Lyme and other tick borne pathogens.

In conclusion, I encourage everyone to visit caryinstitute.org to watch lectures, read studies and articles to learn more about this serious issue. Dr. Ostfeld has published books on the subject as well. If we truly want to lessen the spread of Lyme disease and other tick-borne pathogens on Mount Desert Island, killing the local deer is most likely not an effective strategy.

Katherine Whitney

Bar Harbor