{"id":9280,"date":"2025-04-23T09:42:24","date_gmt":"2025-04-23T14:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=9280"},"modified":"2025-04-23T09:42:27","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T14:42:27","slug":"were-releasing-millions-of-birds-the-ticks-are-thriving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2025\/04\/23\/were-releasing-millions-of-birds-the-ticks-are-thriving\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re Releasing Millions Of Birds. The Ticks Are Thriving"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/johndrake\/2025\/04\/22\/were-releasing-millions-of-birds-the-ticks-are-thriving\/\">Forbes<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Each summer in the U.K., up to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gwct.org.uk\/media\/1251254\/Gamebird-Releasing-Report-2021.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"50 million pheasants, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><u>50 million pheasants<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;are released into woods and fields for recreational shooting. At their seasonal peak, the biomass of these birds rivals that of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s10530-021-02458-y\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"all native U.K. breeding birds combined, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><u>all native U.K. breeding birds combined<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;\u2014 an astonishing ecological intervention repeated year after year. The practice is legal, well-established and supports rural economies. But new evidence suggests it may also be increasing the prevalence of&nbsp;<em>Borrelia&nbsp;<\/em>\u2014 the bacterial cause of Lyme disease \u2014 in local tick populations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/ele.70115\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"study, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><u>study<\/u><\/a>, published in&nbsp;<em>Ecology Letters,<\/em>&nbsp;found that ticks from pheasant-release sites were more than twice as likely to carry&nbsp;<em>Borrelia<\/em>&nbsp;bacteria as those from comparable control woods where pheasants had not been released. The increase was especially pronounced for&nbsp;<em>Borrelia garinii<\/em>, a bird-adapted genospecies linked to neurological Lyme disease in humans. This result fits into a broader pattern of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/publications\/lyme-borreliosis-epidemiology\/lyme-borreliosis-epidemiology-and-surveillance\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"rising Lyme disease incidence, opens in a new window\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><u>rising Lyme disease incidence<\/u><\/a>&nbsp;in the U.K. and across the Northern Hemisphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/johndrake\/2025\/04\/22\/were-releasing-millions-of-birds-the-ticks-are-thriving\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Forbes Each summer in the U.K., up to&nbsp;50 million pheasants&nbsp;are released into woods and fields for recreational shooting. At their seasonal peak, the biomass of these birds rivals that of&nbsp;all native U.K. breeding birds combined&nbsp;\u2014 an astonishing ecological intervention repeated year after year. The practice is legal, well-established and supports rural economies. But new evidence [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tick-bourne-diseases"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9281,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9280\/revisions\/9281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}