Tag : Pathogen

Penn (Pennsylvania): According to a group of experts, prescribed fire, which is a tool widely utilized by forest managers and landowners to fight invasive species, enhance wildlife habitat, and restore ecosystem health, may also help decrease tick populations and the spread of disease viruses they carry. For a recently published paper, the researchers reviewed the scientific literature on the effects of fire on forest composition and structure and its influence on ticks and their wildlife hosts. They concluded that prescribed burning can help restore forest habitats to a state less favorable to several species of disease-carrying ticks and could be an effective management tactic for reducing their populations. The era of fire suppression, which began roughly in the early 1900s and has continued for more than a century, changed the species composition of Eastern forests, creating habitats and microclimates that favored the survival and spread of ticks, noted lead author Michael Gallagher, research ecologist at the Silas Little Experimental Forest, Northern Research Station, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, New Lisbon, New Jersey. "Before the arrival of Europeans, Eastern forests were 'fire-dependent,' characterized by fire-tolerant species such as pine, oak and chestnut," Gallagher said. "Frequent low-to-moderate intensity fires would have fostered dry conditions, thinned the understory and diminished layers of leaf litter, which in turn would have created microclimates with lower humidity and higher temperatures. "These lower-moisture, higher-temperature -- or xeric -- conditions were likely to limit ticks' activity, interaction with reservoir hosts and overall populations," he said. Since fire has been suppressed an ...