Long Island's tick season guide

Matthew McBride’s Long Island childhood in the 1970s was filled with baseball games, building forts and spending hours playing in the woods.

"We were constantly outside," said McBride, 58, who grew up in Northport and owns a company as a hiking guide and teacher. "Maybe I got two ticks during that time."

It was a different scene in June 2023, during a hike — wearing clothes treated with insect repellent — on the Paumanok Path, a 125-mile trail that runs from Rocky Point to Montauk Point.

"At one point I had 100 ticks on me," said McBride, president of the 60-year-old Long Island chapter of the Adirondacks Club.

He now mostly hikes upstate during the summer months to avoid the tick storm.

Over the last 45 years, Long Island has become a hotbed for ticks and an epicenter for the diseases they can carry, such as Lyme disease, babesiosis and more recently, alpha-gal syndrome, the meat allergy sparked by a tick bite.

As Long Islanders face nicer weather and more chances to go outdoors, ticks are becoming more active. Here's what you should know about another tick season.

Did the 'terrible winter' kill ticks? 

Predicting if this will be a "bad" tick year is difficult because population is driven by factors such as weather, vegetation and availability of hosts — such as deer and mice — to feed on, said Scott Campbell, Suffolk County's chief entomologist.

Every year, he oversees tick surveillance in Suffolk to see which species are in the environment and which pathogens they are carrying.

"I’ve never seen a shortage of ticks," Campbell said. "You still have to take precautions whether you are in contact with one tick or 100 ticks."

But there are some signs it will be a busy season

Snow, blanketed Long Island this winter, can insulate ticks from cold temperatures.

"The question is always, 'It's been a terrible winter — will there be fewer ticks?' " entomologist Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann told members of the Adirondacks Club's Long Island Chapter at a meeting this month. "We were snow covered for a whole month at least. That means the ticks and all the insects that are under the snow are buffered from the very cold."

Ticks can be active when the temperatures are about 37 degrees or higher. They are less likely to survive in dry conditions, whether they are extremely hot or cold.

Gangloff-Kaufmann said an abundant acorn season, called an "acorn mast," two years ago may also foretell a tough tick season because it can lead to a burst in the mouse and chipmunk population. Mice are a common reservoir for disease.

Are tick-borne illnesses going up?

"The trends are up for everything you measure," said Nicole Baumgarth, director of the Lyme and Tickborne Diseases Research and Education Institute at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. "The question is whether [tick-borne diseases] are being diagnosed more, or are they more prevalent?"

Emergency department visits for tick bites have been rising. For the most recent week in April available, 168 out of every 100,000 visits to emergency departments in the Northeast were for a tick bite, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For the same week last year it was 107 out of every 100,000 visits.

Stony Brook Southampton Hospital's Tick-Borne Disease Clinic in Hampton Bays has received a steady stream of calls and appointment requests over the last two weeks.

"We're starting to see more tick activity and more tick bites," said Dr. Andrew Handel, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Stony Brook Children's Hospital who has a focus on tick-borne illnesses. "I expect in the coming weeks to start seeing cases of tick-borne diseases."

What about the meat allergy caused by tick bites?

Researchers in the United States and Australia spent years piecing together the mystery of why some people were developing an allergy to meat. Scientists at the University of Virginia found a "range of evidence" by 2010 to link it to the bite of a lone star tick, and specifically a sugar molecule in the tick's saliva that can cause an overactive immune response.

Dr. Erin McGintee, an allergist and immunologist at ENT and Allergy Associates in Southampton, started diagnosing cases on Long Island around 2011 and has treated more than 1,000 patients with the allergy since that time.

McGintee, an alpha-gal expert, said cases were once more common on the East End of Long Island but now show up in patients from various places including Port Jefferson, Islip, Stony Brook and Smithtown.

"It's following where the deer are doing and the lone star tick is spreading," she said. 

Why so many ticks?

Wildlife experts believe much of Long Island's large tick population can be attributed to the warming climate and a growing wildlife population, in particular white-tail deer that provide a food source and mode of transportation for ticks. 

The region's deer population, almost wiped out at the start of the 20th century due to over hunting and other issues, rebounded in recent decades due to conservation efforts and the lack of natural predators.

"The deer population on Long Island exploded," said Gangloff-Kaufmann, associate director at Cornell’s Integrated Pest Management program, who is based in Babylon.

Campbell, Suffolk's entomologist, said the deer on Long Island are moving westward as their numbers grow and they search for food.

"Decades ago, people in Huntington, Smithtown, Islip didn’t have problems with ticks," said Campbell. Th ere's less food for deer in forests, so they "come into residential areas to feed on the arborvitae or plantings in our yards and they bring those ticks with them."

How to protect yourself

Light colors make it easier to spot ticks. People wearing shorts should use insect repellents with DEET, Gangloff-Kaufmann said.

Another option is spraying clothes with permethrin, an insecticide, and allowing them to dry before putting them on. Permethrin should never be sprayed directly onto skin.

"If you are someone who is outdoors for work or enjoying it, have some clothing that you regularly will treat with permethrin," Gangloff-Kaufmann said. "Treat your shoes, treat your socks, treat your pants."

Permethrin-treated clothing, which lasts multiple washes, can also be purchased.

She also recommended that people keep a lint roller in their car to use on their clothing after being in an area known for ticks.

Other steps include putting clothes in the dryer on high heat, which will kill ticks, and taking a shower and doing a tick check.

If you do have a tick bite, Stony Brook Southampton Hospital's Tick-Borne Disease Clinic recommends taking a photo of it, removing it with pointy tweezers, and placing it in a container of alcohol. This will kill the tick and preserve it in case it's needed later to be identified and tested for bacteria that causes disease in humans.

Not all ticks carry bacteria and viruses that cause disease, but removing one quickly lowers the chance of transmission. Watch for symptoms including fever, headache, swollen joints and a rash, and follow up with your health care provider.