Increase in fever tick sightings concerns animal health officials

BROWNSVILLE -- The animals and plants on a Southmost property are under quarantine because inspectors from the Texas Animal Health Commission found cattle there with fever ticks, a TAHC document says.

Rusty Monsees, the owner of the quarantined property on Monsees Road just a mile outside the city limits, doesn’t own livestock himself but said the cattle were seen on his land. He believes the animals were from Mexico.

In the past, the cattle fever tick has caused millions of dollars in losses for the Texas ranching industry.

Monsees said people should be vigilant of strange animals or insects on their property and should not underestimate the fever tick. The tick has recently worried federal and state officials because of an increase in infestations seen outside the permanent quarantine zone, which includes the entire Rio Grande Valley.

“It is dangerous,” Monsees said of the fever tick. “There’s a lot of people that pooh-pooh it off and say ‘Well, big deal.’”

Contaminated cattle fever ticks and southern cattle ticks are fatal to cattle, while other types of ticks may also pose a danger to other animals and humans, experts say.

Ticks in general have the potential to carry disease, though humans may not encounter diseased ticks often, Sonja Swiger said. She is a Texas A&M faculty member and Texas AgriLife Extension entomologist based at the Stephenville center.

“We kind of say the tick is like a dirty syringe,” she said. “They jump around from host to host. ... In that time they can transmit anything they picked up. Not all diseases are pathogens and transferable to each host, but there are some that are.”

Monsees said he received notice in October from the TAHC that his land would be quarantined for eight months, meaning no plants or animals could be removed without a spray treatment from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The battle against cattle ticks, or more specifically the protozoan parasites they might carry, is more than a century old. Such parasites cause bovine babesiosis, a severe and often fatal cattle disease that is also known as Texas fever or cattle fever. According to federal documents, it caused an estimated $130.5 million in losses — some $3 billion in today’s dollars — before a nationwide eradication program was successful at combating the problem. The program began in 1906 and declared success in 1943, but the battle is ongoing.

The fever tick was originally thought to attach only to cattle, but in the last several years scientists have found other animals that are affected, Swiger said.

“At this point, because none of the cattle are used to it in the United States, it could wipe them all out if it came back,” she said. “(Cattle fever ticks) can actually survive on the whitetail deer and the nilgai, which really threw them for a loop, because those animals can get across the border. ... They jump the quarantine zone and come back into Texas.”

The actual parasite carried by the tick has not been found recently in the U.S. but remains in Mexico, she said.

“That’s the reason why we’re trying to keep the tick out,” Swiger said. “As long as we can keep the tick out, we’ll keep that parasite out. If the parasite comes back into the U.S. it’s very fatal to the cattle. It won’t hurt humans, but it’s so devastating to the cattle, that hurts the humans.”

A 2009 report from the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, cites figures that indicate a significant increase in the tick population. According to the report, in South Texas there were 19 recognized infested premises in fiscal year 2003, while in fiscal year 2009 there were 146 properties.

The report states that this is a 750 percent increase over a 6-year span and represents a level of infestation that hasn’t been seen since 1973.

According to federal documents, officials believe some of the factors responsible for the increase are free movement of deer and stray livestock carrying ticks across the border and an increase in the overall deer population.

Efforts to keep the cattle fever tick under control include 85 mounted patrol inspectors known as “tick riders,” a veterinarian epidemiologist and others working together, a barrier fence, and treatments applied to cattle and deer, the federal document said.

In response to an increasing number of fever tick infestations outside the permanent quarantine zone, earlier this year the USDA began discussing a possible extension of the existing cattle fever tick control barrier in Maverick, Starr and Zapata counties.

The permanent tick quarantine zone drawn up by the USDA extends to U.S. Highway 281 in Cameron County and runs from the Rio Grande to roughly 2 miles inland all the way to Del Rio, according to APHIS. The area extends more than 500 miles and provides a buffer zone between Mexico — which still struggles with fever ticks — and the U.S., APHIS said.

Neighborhood awareness

Monsees said all of his neighbors within a mile know about the fever tick quarantine on his land. He called it an aggressive precaution and noted that inspectors did not know where else the cattle they found might have wandered.

“They don’t know where they traveled before,” he said.

Monsees is not allowed to move items such as hay, weeds, manure, gravel or caliche off his land without permission because of the quarantine. Sometimes he sells trees, which now have to be sprayed before they leave his property, but other than that the quarantine has not affected him substantially, he said.

The potential for a fever tick outbreak is what deeply concerns him and, he warns, should concern everyone in the area.

“The potential is there and it’s a very, very realistic nasty potential,” he said. “The fever tick is a nasty little critter.”