{"id":100506,"date":"2025-08-27T09:41:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T09:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/100506\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T09:41:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T09:41:13","slug":"extreme-heat-wildfires-taking-a-toll-on-ticks-in-atlantic-canada-for-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/100506\/","title":{"rendered":"Extreme heat, wildfires taking a toll on ticks in Atlantic Canada \u2014\u00a0for now"},"content":{"rendered":"

If temperatures become too hot, much-maligned ticks are at risk of drying out. The parasites survive by retreating to moist areas like leaf litter and the soil.<\/p>\n

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\u201cEven though it\u2019s dry on top, they can find little bits of moisture in the soil. This weather is not wonderful for them. They\u2019re in hiding, waiting until it gets cooler and moister,\u201d Vett Lloyd, Mount Allison University biology professor, told Global News.<\/p>\n

The ongoing wildfires across Atlantic Canada also have an impact on the survival of ticks.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they burn close to the ground, they\u2019re obviously burning everything there, and when the ticks are in the top layer of soil, they\u2019re going to get crisped,\u201d Lloyd said.<\/p>\n

But while forest fires will incinerate the bugs for now, the effects are only in the short-term, as they will return as the land regenerates.<\/p>\n

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\u201cA very large forest fire, it knocked off the ticks for a year, but as the land regenerated, you got more grasses, and the grasses brought in mice,\u201d she explained. \u201cThe mice are what moved the ticks around locally.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Over the past several weeks, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have banned residents from entering Crown lands, but this does not mean the parasites have been left without a food source.<\/p>\n

\u201cMostly, what the ticks are getting their food from are wild animals,\u201d Lloyd said. \u201cPeople and pets, we\u2019re called accidental hosts. From a tick\u2019s point of view, blood is blood.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Over the past few years, the parasite\u2019s population in the Atlantic region has been steadily increasing, which has also caused an uptick in the spread of Lyme disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Maritimes have experienced a very significant emergence of Lyme disease, particularly in Nova Scotia,\u201d said Nicholas Ogden, a senior research scientist with the Public Health Agency of Canada.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWith now incidences of Lyme disease approaching that of neighbouring parts of the U.S., which are the parts with the highest incidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2024, there were 2,350 cases of Lyme disease reported in Nova Scotia.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far to date in Nova Scotia, we\u2019ve had 1,403 cases of Lyme disease that have been reported to public health,\u201d said Dr. Jennifer\u00a0Cram, a regional medical officer of health.<\/p>\n

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She says that prevention is the safest way to avoid ticks and the viruses they spread.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes that\u2019s changing the place where we\u2019re going for a walk,\u201d she said. \u201cBeing really aware that pets can bring ticks into the house, wearing insect repellent and doing those tick checks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ticks usually wake up from their summer rest in mid-September and October.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t expect to see a decrease in the number of ticks, but that\u2019s when we would find out,\u201d Lloyd said.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If temperatures become too hot, much-maligned ticks are at risk of drying out. The parasites survive by retreating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,27741,44,6290],"class_list":["post-100506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-lyme-disease","tag-news","tag-ticks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}