Effects of Culverts on Fish Passage

If you looked at the press release below you will see that the grant is to study the effects of culverts on fish passage in the St Marys river system.

Turns out that this a problem in many, maybe even most river systems - around here anyway.

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According to Pierre Martel, Resource Management and Public Safety Specialist with Kejimkujik National Park, there are 165 culverts in the park.

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Only 36 of those are on fish bearing streams.

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But get this, recently park staff discovered that of these thirty-six culverts, only fourteen were working as planned, allowing water and fish to pass without interference.
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Fourteen of them were blocked to some degree and eight of them were completely impassable for fish.

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This is in a National Park where people care and will work to repair the problem.

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What the heck is happening elsewhere?

How to Remove a Wood Tick

What the experts say:
The Nova Scotia Department of Health Protection and Promotion–

The Nova Scotian Government distributes a brochure with the following advice: Grasp the tick with tweezers and pull it straight out. To be honest, that is how I deal with them except I don’t bother with the tweezers. I just grasp them as close to the head as I can and pull gently and steadily until the little bugger has to let go. It might take thirty or forty seconds but it seems to work fine.

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A Parasitologist –
A Parasitologist working at Dalhousie University says the best way to remove an embedded tick is to cover the body of the tick with Vaseline, butter or a similar substance. An insect breathes through holes in its body called spiracles and if you plug them it can not breathe. This will cause the tick to contract the little spines which hold it in place so you can just pick it off.

It is the spines on its proboscis and head which make it dangerous to just pull the tick off. If any part of the tick breaks off while pulling it out, the consequences to your health can be profound, from infection to tumors or worse.
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Folk Wisdom –
When I was young, the conventional treatment for removing a tick was to touch it on the bum with a lit cigarette or the little ember on the tip off of a just blown-out wooden match. The tick would pretty quickly let go and try to find a more temperate place to settle in. At that point you would grab it and either finish burning it or just flush it down the toilet. It seemed to work as well as anything and left no obvious ill effects.

A. blacklegged tick larva. B. blacklegged tick nymph. C. blacklegged tick adult. D. Dog or wood tick adult. Image from: http://www.gov.ns.ca/

Where did they come from?

Ticks have not always been a problem in Nova Scotia. The first ones are thought to have arrived in Yarmouth on some sheep imported by a farmer in the 1940’s. I always figured they came in on the dogs brought by tourists via the Portland to Yarmouth ferry that docks in Yarmouth. In either case, the first ticks settled into Yarmouth and have worked their way steadily across the province ever since. In the 1970’s we had them in Queens County. In the 1980’s they were being found in Kejimkujik National Park and into Annapolis County.

Apparently they are everywhere in the province now but I rarely see them west of Lunenburg County. East of there I expect to be crawling with them after a day in the woods.
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What about Lyme disease?
For a long time Lyme disease was not a concern here even though we had ticks. It seems that the ordinary wood tick is not a particular carrier. Recently there have been reports that a different and smaller type of tick has been found around Bedford in Halifax County that is a carrier. I read in the paper recently that there are now twelve confirmed cases of Lyme disease in Nova Scotia. Five of the confirmed cases are in Garden Lots, Lunenburg.
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Keeping them off in the first place

I am not sure you can really keep them off in the first place if you are spending time in the woods but here are the conventional tips to minimize contact:

Tuck your pants into your socks when walking around in grassy areas. Check yourself and your companions frequently during your trip.

Wear a mesh bug jacket when you can.

Use a good DEET based insect repellent and spray a bit on your shoes and around your ankles.

When you get home from your day out, strip off and examine yourself for ticks. You rarely feel them on your skin so check your self over. Most often ticks climb aboard and work their way up toward your head and neck area before embedding-not always but often enough that it is a good idea to carefully check the hair line around the back of your neck and ears.

The most common place to get ticks on you is not actually the woods but the fields and grass around the edges of the woods.

It might be good advice to avoid Garden Lots, Lunenburg County.

-Here is a picture of a device some friends showed me at the cottage the other day.

A doctor from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia – the entry point of Nova Scotia’s tick invasion, invented Tick Off. It looks like it would work pretty well but I have not tried it.

 

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Here is the link to the Nova Scotian Government fact sheet on ticks: Click here