Advocate Tick Attack

A new nonprofit group, the East Hampton Deer and Tick Management Foundation, would like East Hampton Town to begin a program to reduce the incidence of tick-borne diseases here by treating deer, which are a key host, with a tick-killing pesticide at eight feeding stations in Springs.

Known as the four-poster system, it has been used successfully on Shelter Island for seven years, according to Randy Parsons, a former town councilman who is a founder and board member of the new organization, which will hold an information session at 7 p.m. tonight at Ashawagh Hall in Springs.

The stations are baited with corn, and deer that visit them come in contact with rollers that treat their ears, faces, heads, necks, and shoulders with perethrin. According to a press release from the new group, the system could reduce the tick population in a given area by more than 90 percent.

 A three-year pilot project is estimated to cost $4,500 per year for each feeding station. Additional money would be needed for employees to stock, maintain, and monitor the stations. Mr. Parsons said that the new nonprofit group, of which he and two other residents, Ron Brack and Alex Miller, comprise the board, aims to raise $50,000 by the end of the year to pay for the installation of the feeding stations and the necessary personnel. The group hopes to convince East Hampton Town officials not only to allow the stations on public land, but to use donated money to carry out the program. The stations would be baited from mid-March through mid-December; Mr. Parsons said the goal is to have them installed by March.

Mr. Parsons explained that he was prompted to act by an increasing number of fellow Springs residents who told him they no longer go out onto the marshes or into the woods during the seasons when ticks are active. Noting that “eastern Long Island has experienced a dramatic increase in tick populations and tick-related diseases,” the press release said there is “growing support for measures to control tick populations on both public and private lands and to protect the public use and enjoyment of thousands of acres of preserved public lands here.”

In addition, Mr. Parsons said, “the deer suffer enormously from the ticks.” The four-poster system on Shelter Island was supported, Mr. Parsons said, by animal rights activists who oppose a proposed North Fork deer cull, which has been challenged in court, as well as hunting.

The East Hampton Town Board has withdrawn support for a program in which professional sharpshooters werebrought here, while the village has accepted a $100,000 donation for a program to spay deer and to cull them if necessary. “We are trying to do something that is not so controversial and contentious,” Mr. Parsons said.

Permits from the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation are required for feeding stations, and they can be issued to municipalities or private property owners. Stations would be allowed only on tracts of at least 40 acres. Mr. Parsons said an area of Springs between Three Mile Harbor and Fireplace Roads could potentially qualify, as could a section of the Bell Estate. If the program were found to be successful, it could be duplicated in other parts of town, he said.

 Participation in the program by the Girl Scouts of Nassau County, which owns Blue Bay, a 170-acre summer camp in Springs, would be a “key component” in the program’s success, Mr. Parsons said. Scout representatives are expected to attend tonight’s meeting, as are town officials and staffers.

In an email this week, Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said he would be on hand to learn more about the Shelter Island program. “I know firsthand of the serious health hazard of tick-borne disease, having once contracted Lyme disease requiring six weeks of I.V. treatments to overcome,” Mr. Cantwell said. He surmised that the four-poster system might be appropriate in densely populated areas like Springs where other methods of deer control might not be. He added that community support would be needed.

Also on hand tonight will be Mike Scheibel, a wildlife biologist who has run the Shelter Island program for the last seven years, Joshua Stiller, a D.E.C. deer biologist, and Ed Shillingburg, a lawyer who helped set up the East Hampton nonprofit as well as the Shelter Island Deer and Tick Management Foundation. Mr. Parsons said the latter organization had raised $1 million for the program.

A three-year, Cornell University study of four-poster programs on Shelter Island, Fire Island, and North Haven showed no adverse impacts, Mr. Parsons said, and its findings could eliminate the need for East Hampton Town to make the case the other municipalities had to make in applying to the D.E.C.

 The Cornell study, which included pilot projects at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Robert Moses State Park, showed that tick populations can be reduced in a 40-to-100-acre area surrounding a four-poster by between 77 and more than 90 percent after several years of treatment, according to the press release from the East Hampton group.

Because of an effort by State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle and other legislators, the state budget contains $500,000 to help local governments pay the capital costs for four-poster programs, and the new group has suggested that the town pursue state funding.

A suggestion to allow money for four-poster deer tick control from the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund, which is collected from a tax on real estate transfers, was shot down by the fund’s advisory opinions bureau last year.