Smokey the bear and Lyme disease

Ecological research into the cause(s) of Lyme disease's recent, spectacular resurgence has stressed biotic factors, but these seem insufficiently explanatory. Rather, the twentieth century policy of wildland fire suppression may be primarily responsible. Traditionally, both American Indians and Euro-American farmers employed fire to control ticks - which spread the disease- as well as pathogens and other "vermin." Frequent use of fire around habitations would have reduced tick population density, while eliminating much of the vegetation from which ticks disperse on to large mammalian hosts. Given that Lyme disease seems to be expanding from three widely separated foci, prescribed fire offers attractive possibilities for slowing the disease's geographical spread, as well as for reducing its abundance in those places where it is endemic. The arguments offered here for Lyme disease may apply also to many introduced pathogens and insect pests, since they, too, tend to be susceptible to fire.