Waging war against new tick

May 4 2011

The Ministry of Agriculture is preparing to wage a war of eradication against the brown dog tick that recently landed on Rarotonga.

The livestock section of the ministry is now awaiting advice from the Fiji-based Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) veterinary clinic on how to manage the blitz.

Esther Honey Foundation (EHF) director Gregg Young said he first noticed the tick about three weeks ago when a dog living at his Nikao clinic brought it home from the beach.

Young contacted Natural Heritage Trust director Gerald McCormack, who instructed him to collect a sample. He did, and McCormack later identified the specimen as a brown dog tick.

About a week and a half ago, EHF volunteers were conducting a census and found brown dog ticks covering a litter of about seven puppies belonging to an Arorangi family.

The volunteers sprayed the puppies with a liquid flea treatment, effectively extinguishing the ticks. “But if the tick is there (in Arorangi) and on my dog as well, it’s probably anywhere in between,” Young said.

Agriculture’s chief livestock officer Tiria Rere has contacted SPC, which agreed with McCormack’s deduction that the insect is in fact a brown dog tick.

The veterinary clinic in Fiji then sent the information about the Rarotonga tick to an expert entomologist in Guam.

Rere says the Guam laboratory will confirm or reject the identification, which will open the floor for SPC veterinarians to advise the Ministry of Agriculture on how best to eradicate or fight the tick.

In the meantime, Rere says his staff will be investigating the tick’s origins.

They are interested in the answers to questions about whether a tick-ridden dog was imported or if its owner or even its owner’s neighbour recently travelled overseas.

“My staff will be trying to trace back to the (source) of the problem.”

Rere says his office’s primary concern is that the tick could spread to livestock that humans consume.

While the brown dog tick is not known to spread bacterial disease in places like Australia and Samoa, it has carried spotted fever in the Mediterranean, North Africa and Asia.

“But who knows what we have here – we have the tick and we don’t know where it came from,” Young said.

Rere says he is committed to eradication of the tick, and prefers that approach over a curative approach that involves simply treating infected animals.

“We have to try and get rid of it but if we can’t then we can only try and minimise the problem,” Rere said.

As Agriculture awaits word from Fiji, Young encourages people who notice ticks in their pet’s fur to have them treated at EHF. - Rachel Reeves