Habitat and wildlife conservation plans need to consider Lyme disease risk

9 May 2017

"Current work at the Hutton Institute is testing for Lyme disease risk at a lot of sites with widely varying deer densities to test the impact of deer densities on Lyme disease risk"

Lyme disease – an infection contracted from the bite of an infected tick– is an important emerging disease in the UK, and is increasing in incidence in people in the UK and large parts of Europe and North America.

A new study, published by the Royal Society, found that some types of conservation action could increase the abundance of ticks, which transmit diseases like Lyme disease.