Ways to combat ticks, fighting hunger
A blacklegged tick, also known as a deer tick. Credit: AP/James Gathany, CDC
Seek humane ways to combat ticks
The editorial “Save Long Island from ticks, cull more deer” [Opinion, Aug. 23] raises questions about the effectiveness and ethics of deer culling on Long Island. Nearly 4,000 deer were culled last year in addition to those killed by recreational hunters, yet Lyme disease persists.
Years of efforts to curb deer and ticks have failed to resolve the issue. Because a single female tick can lay thousands of eggs, eliminating ticks would be an enormous challenge and could have environmental consequences. Eliminating deer would not necessarily end Lyme disease, because the bacterium can continue circulating among other mammals and birds.
By comparison, malaria has been eliminated as an endemic public health problem in the United States, but mosquitoes continue to spread potentially fatal and debilitating diseases such as West Nile virus and, more rarely, eastern equine encephalitis, which has been detected in mosquitoes on Long Island. Many other mosquito-borne diseases exist globally and can reach Long Island through travel.
Let us remember that we have invaded wildlife habitat. Our priority should be to respect nature and foster compassion for animals.
Resources should go to Lyme disease vaccine research, humane deer sterilization, fencing, and wildlife crossings. Above all, we must take precautions against tick bites.
— Laina Karthikeyan, Westbury
The writer is a professor of biological sciences at New York City College of Technology.
After-hours meals for those in need
To solve hunger on Long Island is to reduce the amount of food that spoils and is thrown away [“Hungry on Long Island need all of us,” Opinion, Sept. 25].
One restaurant in each police precinct can stay open at 10 p.m. on a rotating basis for “free dinners” for the hungry, staffed by volunteers. That night’s restaurant would be a collection point for unneeded food.
Police officers and firefighters could help collect surplus food and deliver it to the “sponsoring” restaurant. Leftovers could go to a food pantry.
That some 8% of Long Islanders experience food insecurity is unacceptable.
A solution to hunger can be achieved that would better all of society.
— Alan H. Cohn, Nesconset
WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO JOIN OUR DAILY CONVERSATION. Just go to newsday.com/submitaletter and follow the prompts. Or email your opinion to letters@newsday.com. Submissions should be no more than 200 words. Please provide your full name, hometown, phone number and any relevant expertise or affiliation. Include the headline and date of the article you are responding to. Letters become the property of Newsday and are edited for all media. Due to volume, readers are limited to one letter in print every 45 days. Published letters reflect the ratio received on each topic.
