COALITION OF CONNECTICUT SPORTSM

COALITION OF CONNECTICUT SPORTSMEN

P.O. Box 2506, Hartford, CT 06146, (203) 245-8076

Testimony presented to the ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE, March 10, 2008

IN SUPPORT of HB 5852 (RAISED) AN ACT CONCERNING THE CONTROL OF LYME DISEASE.

by Robert T. Crook, Director

This may be the most important bill addressed by this committee. Although the bill is primarily a public health issue, the solution is environmental.

To rid our state of its epidemic levels of Lyme disease will require no new medical discoveries, great expenditures or new inventions. The first step is through facts, scientific data, and common-sense to convince this legislature that an immediate effort at control is essential.

Our approach is common-sense. There can be no dispute that the incidence of Lyme disease is tied to ticks dependent on the high populations of Deer. "The abundance and distribution of the Ixodes scapularis (deer) ticks is related to the size of the deer population". This is because "deer are key to the reproductive success of the tick." "The fault is not in the animal. The problem is in their numbers. There only need be fewer of them" (Ct Agricultural Experiment Station 2007, CAES.) In conclusion, Ixodes scapularis is the vector for at least three human pathogens. As long as deer remain abundant and this tick continues to spread, the incidence of disease will increase and additional tick-borne diseases may emerge to affect the citizens of Connecticut.

How high is the incidence? “There were 1,548 human cases of Lyme disease reported to the Connecticut Department of Public Health in 1995, 3,104 cases in 1996, and 2,297 cases in 1997. One study suggested that only 16% of the diagnosed cases in the state are actually reported. In other words, there may have been over 14,000 diagnosed cases in 1997, alone (CAES).”

To date, only deer population reduction that has ever ended a Lyme disease epidemic. CT legislators have had input into one example of this effort in Bluff Point and Mumford Cove. There are other examples. Other solutions: pesticides, 4 Posters, etc. have been studied but costs, manpower time and effort, and materials are excessive. Our solution is simple, provide hunters more opportunity to harvest deer in those areas where population levels are excessive. “Hunting may have to become less a recreation and more a community service or civic duty when the impacts of deer are broadly recognized (Riley, Ecoscience, 2003)”. This solution treats the cause of the problem, the excess deer numbers, and has no new costs.

In doing so, we can also save the native woodlands, wildflowers and songbirds of Connecticut from on-going devastation by unnatural over-populations of deer.

Legislation to end or control the Lyme epidemic is clearly an idea whose time has come.

We’d urge substitute language to incorporate the only rational and proven solution at hand.

Thank you.