Block Island deer plan targets tick-borne illness

Rhode Island is turning to wildlife policy as a public-health tool on Block Island. A House resolution directs the Department of Environmental Management to work with the Town of New Shoreham on a regulatory framework aimed at reducing tick-borne illness, tying the island’s deer population to the spread of disease.

An island where the risk lingers

Block Island is not being treated like an ordinary mainland setting. The resolution describes it as a unique island community, reachable only by ferry or air, with year-round residents and hundreds of thousands of seasonal visitors and tourists each year. It says that isolation has prevented the natural predation or dispersal that would otherwise help regulate deer numbers.

That matters because the document says ticks are the primary vector for Lyme disease, anaplasmosis, babesiosis and other tick-borne illnesses. Infection rates among New Shoreham residents are described as disproportionately high compared with other Rhode Island communities, with the burden falling on families and the island’s limited health resources.

Deer management as public health

The resolution points to scientific literature and examples from other island and coastal communities to support the idea that managing deer can help reduce human exposure to tick-borne illness. The town, meanwhile, is asking for tools that are safe, effective, humane and consistent with sound wildlife management principles.

DEM is central to that effort because the resolution notes the agency already has authority over wildlife management and deer damage permits. The ask is for state and local officials to build a framework that takes the island’s conditions seriously instead of treating Block Island like the mainland.

On an island where residents, workers and tourists all share the same small ground, the debate is not abstract. It is about whether changing deer management can lower the odds that more people come home with a disease carried by ticks.