The Town of Doty in Oconto County and the Town of Bartelme in Shawano County are among several Wisconsin towns at the high-risk stage for tick activity.
Most of the rest of each county is in the moderate-risk stage, according to TickZone, a free daily tick-risk forecast covering 20,750 towns across 38 states, combining Centers for Disease Control and Prevention county Lyme incidence rates, satellite land cover for each town and daily weather (temperature, humidity and recent rainfall).
“Ticks need moisture and hosts. Their best habitat is the edge, where forest meets open ground: leaf litter, brush, tall grass along trails, and the line where woods meet a yard or field. That is where deer, mice and the ticks that feed on them overlap,” said Nathan Burnett, founder of TickZone (https://tickzone.app). “Pavement and short, dry lawn are poor tick habitat, which is why risk tracks so closely with how wooded and broken-up the land is.”
Wisconsin is one of the highest Lyme-risk states in the country, and Oconto and Shawano counties sit well up the list.
Oconto County ranks 15th of Wisconsin’s 72 counties with a reported Lyme incidence of 246.4 per 100,000.
Shawano County ranks 26th of 72 with an incidence of 199.5 per 100,000.
Menominee County shows no reported cases, but Burnett cautions about reading too much into that number.
“It’s the smallest county in the state, about 4,200 people, and almost entirely forest. With a population that small, zero reported cases means too few to report reliably, not an absence of ticks,” he said. “The blacklegged (deer) tick is established there, and the habitat is among the highest-risk in the region. I’d call Menominee under-counted, not low-risk.”
According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, the number of tick bite-associated emergency department visits per 10,000 in northeastern Wisconsin is at 32 for the week of July 6-12. The high this year was 73 for the week of May 25-31.
Shawano Menominee Counties Health Department offers these recommendations when going outdoors.
• Wear long sleeves, long pants and socks.
• Use insect repellent.
• Heart clothes and gear treated with permethrin.
• Perform daily tick checks.
• Take a bath or shower after spending time outdoors.
“Stay to the center of trails, and do a tick check within a couple hours of coming inside,” Burnett said. “A shower and a hot dryer cycle on your clothes both help.”
There are roughly 90 tick species in the U.S., but only a handful bite people and spread disease. In this area, the one that matters most is the blacklegged, or deer, tick, which carries Lyme and is established across the area. The American dog tick is also present, mainly in grassy spots.
“The lone star tick, common in the South, has not established this far north yet, though it is moving northward over time, with the occasional sighting in Wisconsin, likely hitchhiking on birds,” Burnett said.
If you find a tick attached to you, use fine-tipped tweezers, grip it as close to the skin as possible and pull straight up with steady pressure. Do not twist it, burn it or coat it in anything.
“Clean the area, note the date, and watch for a rash or fever over the following weeks,” Burnett said. “Prompt, correct removal is the single biggest thing in your favor.”
Not all tick bites result in Lyme disease, but that’s not because the ticks are clean.
“Up here, a large share of adult deer ticks do carry the Lyme bacterium, so you should not count on any given one being harmless,” Burnett said. “The reasons a bite often doesn’t lead to Lyme are different. First, not every tick is a deer tick, and dog ticks don’t carry Lyme at all. Second, an infected deer tick generally has to stay attached 24 to 48 hours to transmit. That’s why identifying the tick and removing it quickly matters so much.”
Wisconsin’s real risk window runs from about April through late fall, with two peaks, Burnett said.
Right now, mid-summer, is the peak for nymphs, the poppy-seed-sized ticks that are hardest to spot and cause most of the bites that make people sick.
The second peak is adult deer ticks in October and November, which tends to catch hunters and hikers off guard after they’ve stopped thinking about it. Ticks go dormant in hard winter cold. A stray adult can appear on an unusually warm winter day, but that’s a minor exception, not something to plan around.
Burnett started TickZone this summer.
“A few things pushed me into it,” he said. “It’s been a record tick season, I kept running into the lone star tick turning up in new places, a tick I hadn’t even heard of until recently, and honestly, it’s personal, too. My younger brother got Lyme when we were younger. He was treated and he’s fine, but it stuck with me. I wanted people to be able to see the risk for their own town, not just a statewide number. It now pulls together CDC surveillance, land cover and daily weather across 38 states.”
Readers can look up any town themselves for free with no signup required by visiting https://tickzone.app.
kpasson@newmedia-wi.com
BY THE NUMBERS
Every TickZone community gets a single 0 to 100 tick-risk score for the day, updated each morning. Low-risk scores are 0-33, moderate-risk scores are 34-66, and high-risk scores are 67-100.
TickZone provides a score that is a live daily reading that shifts with weather, so treat the following figures as a mid-July snapshot.
Oconto County
Doty (town) 74
Townsend (town) 65
Abrams (town) 59
Underhill (town) 58
Suring 56
Breed (town) 55
How (town) 55
Morgan (town) 55
Riverview (town) 55
Mountain (town) 54
Gillett 53
Chase (town) 53
Little Suamico (town) 53
Bagley (town) 52
Stiles (town) 52
Lakewood (town) 50
Oconto Falls (town) 49
Pensaukee (town) 49
Gillett (town) 47
Maple Valley (town) 47
Oconto Falls 46
Brazeau (town) 45
Oconto (town) 42
Oconto 41
Spruce (town) 40
Little River (town) 38
Lena (town) 37
Lena 31
Shawano County
Bartelme (town) 68
Germania (town) 63
Seneca (town) 63
Eland 61
Tigerton 61
Red Springs (town) 61
Aniwa 60
Almon (town) 60
Birnamwood (town) 60
Fairbanks (town) 60
Morris (town) 60
Navarino (town) 60
Aniwa (town) 59
Hutchins (town) 59
Bowler 58
Wittenberg (town) 58
Waukechon (town) 57
Pella (town) 56
Wescott (town) 56
Mattoon 55
Grant (town) 55
Belle Plaine (town) 54
Birnamwood 52
Bonduel 52
Herman (town) 52
Wittenberg 51
Gresham 50
Lessor (town) 49
Shawano 48
Green Valley (town) 47
Hartland (town) 44
Richmond (town) 44
Washington (town) 44
Angelica (town) 43
Cecil 39
Maple Grove (town) 38
Menominee County
Menominee (town) 45
Source: https://tickzone.app
