Local quarantines instated to prevent spread of ticks

McALLEN — Cattle fever ticks found outside special buffer zones in South Texas are alarming area ranchers.

The Texas Animal Health Commission expanded the region's preventive cattle fever tick quarantine area by 307,000 acres last week after ticks were found on livestock outside special quarantine zones in Zapata and Starr counties.

The preventive quarantine areas in Zapata and Starr counties were initially set in August 2007 and April 2008, respectively.

The Texas Animal Health Commission first pushed the fever tick out of the United States in 1943, when it established a permanent quarantine area along the Rio Grande to act as a buffer zone between Texas and Mexico, said Carla Everett, information officer at the Texas Animal Health Commission. The half-million acre permanent quarantine zone runs from Del Rio to Brownsville and is between 500 feet to five miles wide, she said.

The total land area of the preventive quarantine zone now totals 1 million acres, she said.

The only difference between permanent and preventive zones is that the commission hopes to lift the restrictions in the preventive quarantine area once the tick is pushed back into Mexico, Everett said.

"The fever tick can carry this blood parasite called babesia and can be transmitted to cattle by tick, which will cause the cattle to have a very high fever and bloody red urine," said Everett. "The animal actually dies 90 percent of the time."

While the tick itself is harmless to livestock, should it carry cattle fever the disease can rapidly spread among livestock and other wildlife, such as deer and sheep.

Neither the tick nor cattle fever is harmful to humans, though.

Everett said that ticks carrying the fever have not yet been detected elsewhere in Texas, but that the preventive quarantine zones set over the past year were to push the fever tick out of the United States and back into Mexico, where special measures are not being taken.

In Texas, however, the commission has hired so-called "Tick Riders," whose salaries are federally funded, to inspect livestock and treat infected livestock by either spraying or dipping the animals in a tick-deterrent chemical. They also permit ranchers to move their livestock from the permanent and preventive zones to other areas. All Texan ranchers are required to take these measures if ticks have been detected in their livestock, Everett said.

Even though the state picks up the ranchers' tab for inspecting and disinfecting affected cattle, the costs of leasing helicopters and paying cowboys to gather cattle for inspections are pretty expensive.

"The quarantine zone is going to cause a little bit more hassle for the local ranchers in that area," said Richard Thorpe, the Animal Health Chairman of the Southwestern and Texas Cattle Raisers Association. But "if we don't try to stop it ... economically, it could be extremely damaging to the cattle raisers in the state."

Everett said that the commission urges Valley ranchers who spot fever ticks in their livestock to call their area Animal Health Commission office at (800) 658-6570. A representative from the commission's office can inspect cattle for ticks before moving the animals out of South Texas, she said.

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Lynnea Olivarez covers general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4422.