North Haven Strives To Cut Tick Count With More 4-Posters

The Village of North Haven has launched a public education campaign to broaden support and win wider consent for its hobbled tick-killing program, which uses feeding stations called 4-Posters to apply a pesticide to the heads and necks of deer as they eat cracked corn.

The eight-year-old program, the goal of which is to reduce human exposure to tick-borne illnesses, saw a peak of 17 4-Poster units deployed on wooded or vacant parcels around the village during the spring and summer of 2019. But in 2020, a new State Department of Environmental Conservation rule requiring written consent from the owners of all properties within 745 feet of a unit slashed the number to three units.

Shelter Island, which also ran a 4-Poster program, abandoned it entirely as a result of the new rule.

On North Haven, the rule change resulted in a 144 percent increase in the local tick population over one year, according to Village Trustee Terie Diat, who analyzed the results of routine tick drags conducted by horticulturalist Chris Miller at seven locations. Miller manages the 4-Poster program for the village.

Miller said the DEC “doesn’t like the program” because it relies on attracting and feeding deer, a violation of state hunting rules.

A key part of the new campaign is the mass distribution of digital forms that residents can easily sign electronically and return, giving consent for 4-Posters to be installed in their neighborhoods.

“It’s an easy click: done, over and out, in less than a minute,” said Trustee Claas Abraham, who is spearheading the campaign with Diat.

Previously, the village staff sent out letters and paper consent forms with mixed results. Many individual homeowners did not respond or could not be individually identified. Many gave consent, but those who didn’t reply — plus a handful who said “no” — forced Miller to pull 14 4-Posters from the field.

Last year, as more consents trickled in, the village was able to deploy a few more units. This year, Miller said he had deployed eight in early April and that he hoped new consents coming in would allow him eventually to install four or five more before the end of summer.

Dubbed the “Kick Ticks Out of North Haven” campaign, Diat and Abraham launched the effort in late March with an email to 775 people explaining the 4-Poster program, providing links to background information as well links to the digital consent form.

Ten days later, in early April, 120 forms had been returned, all giving consent, Diat and Abraham reported in an interview. Diat said that represented 23 percent of the recipients who opened the email. Consents have continued to come in since then, she and Abraham said.

A second element of the tick-reduction program is the village’s longstanding bow hunt to cull the deer herd, which is conducted under a state nuisance permit by expert volunteers in the late fall and early winter.

Deer are the primary hosts for ticks. The “Kick Ticks Out of North Haven” email includes a link to a consent form to allow bow hunters to release arrows within 150 feet of a property owner’s house, the standard limit in state hunting regulations.

John Rocchetta, who manages the hunt, has told the Village Board that the hunt cannot increase its number of deer taken without greater access to developed neighborhoods.

Diat and Abraham reported that, in the first 10 days of the campaign, 80 bow-hunt forms had been returned, all giving consent, representing 15 percent of the emails that were opened.

Rocchetta told the Village Board in January that, according to his hunters and his own experience, North Haven dramatically suppressed its tick population when all 17 4-Posters were being deployed. Since the new DEC rule went into effect, the ticks are on the rebound, he said.

Diat, who is running for mayor, and Abraham, who is running for reelection as a trustee, plan to continue the push, which they said is supported by the mayor and entire Board of Trustees. A next step will be a postcard reminder to all North Haven addresses to submit their consent forms. Also there will be reminder in the next village newsletter, which Diat edits.

As more 4-poster consents come in, they said, Miller will cross-reference them to potential sites to determine additional locations where units can be deployed. She said the village budget for the coming year starting July 1 will provide funds for up to 17 units and the corn they will need.

“I’d love to get up to 25 to 35 units” in the field eventually, Diat said, noting that Miller believes that number “could eradicate ticks on North Haven.”

A crash in the tick population could lead to another benefit, Abraham said: homeowners could stop having their yards sprayed with the same permethrin-based pesticide that the 4-Posters use.

The 4-poster has four vertical paint rollers around each of its two feeding trays, saturated with the tickicide. They coat the deer’s heads and necks, where ticks concentrate, with the chemical.

“There’s not a single drop going into the air,” Abraham said. “Just to have it on the deer, where it has 100-percent effectiveness, rather than up in the air, where it gets on our pets and into our lungs,” would be a major benefit.