Tick expert: As diseases rise in NC, it’s time to stop being sentimental about Bambi

Welcome to NC Voices, where leaders, readers and experts from across North Carolina can speak on issues affecting our communities. Send submissions of 350 words or fewer to opinion@newsobserver.com.

Ticks: Deer play a deadly role in NC

The writer is an adjunct professor at UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health and a scientific adviser for the Tick-borne Infections Council of North Carolina.

Regarding “Study tracks white-tailed deer through town and country,” (July 5):

Suburban expansion and less hunting do contribute to deer overpopulation. But not mentioned in this article was the deer’s role as transmitters of ticks and tick-borne diseases. Research shows deer proliferation contributes to North Carolina’s increasing tick populations and tick-borne diseases.

Two species of ticks here overwinter on deer, mating as they feed. The black-legged tick transmits Lyme disease. That tick,. the lone star tick and others also transmit other pathogens, including some that can be lethal. The lone star also causes the Alpha-gal allergy which makes people unable to eat red meat.

Our state lacks data from all 100 counties on the geography and populations of ticks and the proportions infected with various pathogens in different locations. Intense work is required to collect such data. Adding to the difficulty, patterns change over months and years.

Lyme disease, rather than Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, is now the most reported tick-borne infection in our state. The first known locally acquired case of Lyme disease was in Wake County in 2009. The current hotspot for Lyme disease is our northwest corner where an unpublished 2020 study found 24% of black-legged ticks there positive for Lyme bacteria. Statewide, the incidence of Lyme disease continues to increase, as does ehrlichiosis, an illness spread by ticks.

The CDC revises case definitions periodically, making the study of trends difficult. Reported cases accepted for public health numbers do not reflect all the actual cases. In addition, not all tick-borne diseases and conditions are required to be reported. For N.C. tick-borne illness data go to tic-nc.org.

In addition to the thousands of dollars in medical costs for the dozen or so tick-borne diseases and conditions North Carolinians may acquire, the yearly cost to citizens and state from deer-caused crashes and property damage is in the millions. Cost to gardeners for deer-deterrents, now necessary almost everywhere in the state, is unknown.

The days of being sentimental about Bambi are over. We must put human health and safety first.

Marcia E. Herman-Giddens, Pittsboro

Help find, preserve slave records

The writers work at N.C. universities.

Tucked away in county offices across the country are documents that can tell the stories of people once enslaved. Details like names, ages, physical descriptions, and identities of owners were listed on bills of sale.

As preservationists, researchers and educators, we’re committed to locating and digitizing local government files that predate the Civil War. We’ve built a grassroots movement in North Carolina known as the People Not Property Project to scan such documents from county registers of deeds, transcribe them, and add them to a searchable database.

But records from the 18th and 19th centuries can be faded, hard to read, and mostly offline. We are asking local communities to lobby their elected officials to encourage participation in the People Not Property Project.

In Greensboro a student group at Elon University School of Law has received statewide attention for its strategic and unwavering approach to transcribing hundreds of deeds. This effort is ideal for crowdsourcing. A large volume of information is much more manageable when you have many volunteers who can work remotely from home to review documents before typing the details into a database.

Students, civic clubs, community volunteers — the possibilities are limitless when a community is dedicated to the preservation of records that might help us trace the lineage of those whose ancestors were once shackled and viewed as property.

So, please lobby your registers of deeds to join the People Not Property Project. You’ll be helping people find their place in the world, their authentic identity, based on the history of their ancestors.

Richard Cox, UNC-Greensboro

Andy Haile, Elon University School of Law