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Coyotes-Wolves-Cougars.blogspot.com

Grizzly bears, black bears, wolves, coyotes, cougars/ mountain lions,bobcats, wolverines, lynx, foxes, fishers and martens are the suite of carnivores that originally inhabited North America after the Pleistocene extinctions. This site invites research, commentary, point/counterpoint on that suite of native animals (predator and prey) that inhabited The Americas circa 1500-at the initial point of European exploration and subsequent colonization. Landscape ecology, journal accounts of explorers and frontiersmen, genetic evaluations of museum animals, peer reviewed 20th and 21st century research on various aspects of our "Wild America" as well as subjective commentary from expert and layman alike. All of the above being revealed and discussed with the underlying goal of one day seeing our Continent rewilded.....Where big enough swaths of open space exist with connective corridors to other large forest, meadow, mountain, valley, prairie, desert and chaparral wildlands.....Thereby enabling all of our historic fauna, including man, to live in a sustainable and healthy environment. - Blogger Rick

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Saturday, September 23, 2017

"Researcher Tim R. Hofmeester, at Wageningen University in the Netherlands conducted lyme disease research putting forth the hypothesis that areas in his Country with high numbers of mice eating foxes and weasels would have less incidence of lyme disease--fewer mice and fewer lyme carrying ticks".............What he actually found is that biologist John Laundre's LANDSCAPE OF FEAR paradigm was at work in regions with mice eating carnivores......."While mice are eaten by foxes, coyotes, bobcats, lynx, fishers martens, eagles, hawks and owls, it is actually the mice that escape predation that minimize lyme transmission to humans"................."By being afraid of being eaten by these carnivores, the mice actually do not wander as far afield, becoming deathly afrraid that they will become carnivore food"....."As a result, they do not become easy targets for lyme infected ticks to bite them"............"Areas with the most predator activity had almost the same number of mice as areas without predators, but had one-fifth as many ticks and one-eighth as many infected ticks".........“This is the first paper to empirically show that predators are good for our health with respect to tick-borne pathogens"..............."Nothing else — culling deer, killing mice, spraying pesticides — has had an effect on tick numbers or tick-borne diseases that comes even close to impact that mice eating carnivores have on them".............That is another key reason why this Blogger roots for the carnivores, always a pleasure to hear the yipps of the Coyotes as I go to bed each evening


Eckert: Ticks make you 

nervous? You need

 more coyotes


 Aug. 17, 2017; Michael Eckert

Yes, I find myself checking for ticks more often 
this year. And I’m finding more, too.
My wife swears I’m not afraid of anything. “You
 ride your bike in the street,” she tells me.
Ticks, though, give me the heebie-jeebies. 
Dodging pickups on Pine Grove Avenue is
 no big deal; finding a tick gives me chills.









American researchers are saying we are seeing more
 ticks more often in more places because of changes
 in climate and weather. In Michigan, we used to see
 ticks for a month or so centered around May. This year,
 I picked up my first one in April and the most recent a
 couple of weeks ago.
Eastern Fisher










Milder winters are starting them up early and wetter
 springs and summers are leaving them in the tall 
grass and brush longer than in previous years.
More ticks, then, means greater risk of a host of 
tick-borne diseases, including the Lyme disease 
that is spreading through the west side of the
 Lower Peninsula.

Coyote








But a Dutch researcher has found another factor
 that may be in play.

Tim R. Hofmeester, at Wageningen University in 
the Netherlands, apparently has a better tolerance
 for ticks than I do. Even after taking all the standard
 precautions, he had to remove more than 100 
ticks from his body while doing his research.
What he did was mice, ticks and predators in 
different parts of the Dutch countryside. Lyme
 disease gets to humans from ticks who have 
fed on infected mice. Hofmeester’s theory was
 that areas with high numbers of foxes and 
martens, a predator in the weasel family, 
would have fewer mice and fewer infected ticks.
He did more than count animals and collect 
thousands of mice and ticks. He set up dozens
 of cameras to record their behavior

Red Fox.








Between the cameras and his own arithmetic, 
Hofmeester learned his original theory was
 wrong. Predators do have a huge impact on
 the number of infected ticks, but not the way
 he supposed.
Foxes and martens do suppress mouse numbers,
 but not as much as they prevent infected ticks.
 The predators kill and eat some of the mice 
and make the survivors jumpy.

Bobcat














Nervous mice tend to stay home. Mice that stay
 home don’t run into ticks, don’t provide food for
 the next generation of ticks and don’t become 
infected with Lyme disease. Areas with the most
 predator activity had almost the same number
 of mice as areas without predators, but had
 one-fifth as many ticks and one-eighth as many 
infected ticks.
“This is the first paper to empirically show that 
predators are good for your health with respect
 to tick-borne pathogens,” Taal Levi, an ecologist
 at Oregon State University who was not involved 
in the study, told the New York Times.

Gray Fox
















Levi points out that nothing else — culling deer, 
killing mice, spraying pesticides — has had an 
effect on tick numbers or tick-borne diseases 
that comes even close to Hofmeester’s findings.
This is going to be another reason I always root
 for the predators.
And why I’ll be happy the next time I find coyote
 tracks or hear a fox yipping in my neighborhood.

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