Early reports of Ticks, but they’re not on the rise says expert

The creepy crawlers are back as tick season is in full swing.

Emily Jenkins is a Professor of Veterinary Microbiology at the University of Saskatchewan. She said the number of ticks is normal for this time of year.

She said there are two ways to look at the population of ticks in the province: eTick and active surveillance.

“On the eTick side, reports are about the same actually,” Jenkins said.
“I was surprised because anecdotally, I have also heard that people are encountering more ticks. But when I look at the numbers, we’re at about 400 tick reports since the tick season started this year and that’s really on par,” she said. The program has been running since 2020.

eTick is a public platform where people can upload images of ticks they find on themselves, their pets, or in the environment. It is used to identify and monitor the population of ticks throughout Canada.

The active surveillance numbers aren’t wringing any alarm bells either.
“I looked at our dragging results and some sites are up, some sites are down but on the whole, there isn’t a consistent trend to a higher number of ticks out there in the environment,” she said.

“But again, I have to put a caveat on that. It’s been a wet spring and we have not been able to drag the normal number of sites that we would have got to by this point in the year. So I would say unfortunately because of the weird weather we’ve been having, we don’t have any solid data on what’s happening in the environment.”

Although the numbers aren’t off, Jenkins said reports of tick sightings came two weeks earlier than normal this year.

“Normally it’s about mid-April when my inbox starts to fill up with all of the eTick notifications,” she said. “This year, we started getting reports as early as April 2. It was a bit of an April Fool’s day gift from a mild winter maybe.”

She said the mild temperatures played a major role in the early arrival of ticks.
“Ticks are amazingly able to survive even our normal winters as long as they can get into the right leaf litter and underneath the snow,” she said. “But probably that long, dry fall may have actually had an impact on ticks because they actually desiccate if they can’t find the right habitat to survive the winter.”

Read more:

• Saskatchewan health ministry offers tips on how to prevent tick bites
• Saskatchewan sees increase in ticks that can carry Lyme disease
• Ticks still active in Saskatchewan in fall months

Even though ticks made an early comeback, Jenkins has some good news too.

“Based on our dragging and on eTick we’ve only had one report of a black-legged tick (Lyme disease carrier) that’s been validated,” she said. “There might be a few still in the system that we’re still processing.This is good news because that is the one tick from a public health perspective we don’t want to find. It’s reassuring.”

Jenkins biggest piece of advice is to avoid long grassy areas.
“We know that ticks are pretty fickle,” she said. “They do have little hot spots and I know people have to described to me that they stumbled into a tick nest and it can feel like that because suddenly you’re absolutely crawling.”

“The biggest thing is location. Avoid those hot spots. In general, remember to do tick checks, wear light-coloured long clothes so you can see them on you and get them off of you before they attach. You can also use repellants.”

Jenkins encourages people to upload pictures of the ticks they find this summer to eTick. She said people can expect a response in 48 hours.

This service might no longer be available in future years.
“We’re in our fifth year of eTick and it’s certainly been a great program,” she said. “It’s starting to let us answer some of these questions. It is also being considered as to whether or not it will be renewed for funding in the following years so take advantage of it this year because we’re not sure we’ll have it in subsequent years.”

-with files from 980 CJME’s Lisa Schick