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April 23, 2026 Tick-borne illnesses on the rise across all of Long Island

Since the early 1980s, Long Island has become a hotbed for ticks and an epicenter for the diseases they can carry, such as Lyme disease, babesiosis and more recently, alpha-gal syndrome, the meat allergy sparked by a tick bite. Lisa L. Colangelo reports in NEWSDAY that predicting whether this will be a "bad" tick year is difficult because population is driven by factors such as weather, vegetation and availability of hosts — such as deer and mice — to feed on, said Scott Campbell, Suffolk County's chief entomologist.

Every year, he oversees tick surveillance in Suffolk to see which species are in the environment and which pathogens they are carrying.

"I’ve never seen a shortage of ticks," Campbell said. "You still have to take precautions whether you are in contact with one tick or 100 ticks."

But there are some signs it will be a busy season

Snow, blanketed Long Island this winter, can insulate ticks from cold temperatures.

"The question is always, 'It's been a terrible winter — will there be fewer ticks?' " entomologist Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann told members of the Adirondacks Club's Long Island Chapter at a meeting this month. "We were snow covered for a whole month at least. That means the ticks and all the insects that are under the snow are buffered from the very cold."

Ticks can be active when the temperatures are about 37 degrees or higher. They are less likely to survive in dry conditions, whether they are extremely hot or cold.

Gangloff-Kaufmann said an abundant acorn season, called an "acorn mast," two years ago may also foretell a tough tick season because it can lead to a burst in the mouse and chipmunk population. Mice are a common reservoir for disease.

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Are tick-borne illnesses going up?

"The trends are up for everything you measure," said Nicole Baumgarth, director of the Lyme and Tickborne Diseases Research and Education Institute at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. "The question is whether [tick-borne diseases] are being diagnosed more, or are they more prevalent?" Lisa L. Colangelo reports in NEWSDAY that emergency department visits for tick bites have been rising. For the most recent week in April available, 168 out of every 100,000 visits to emergency departments in the Northeast were for a tick bite, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For the same week last year it was 107 out of every 100,000 visits.

Stony Brook Southampton Hospital's Tick-Borne Disease Clinic in Hampton Bays has received a steady stream of calls and appointment requests over the last two weeks.

"We're starting to see more tick activity and more tick bites," said Dr. Andrew Handel, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Stony Brook Children's Hospital who has a focus on tick-borne illnesses. "I expect in the coming weeks to start seeing cases of tick-borne diseases."

Researchers in the United States and Australia spent years piecing together the mystery of why some people were developing an allergy to meat. Scientists at the University of Virginia found a "range of evidence" by 2010 to link it to the bite of a lone star tick, and specifically a sugar molecule in the tick's saliva that can cause an overactive immune response.

Dr. Erin McGintee, an allergist and immunologist at ENT and Allergy Associates in Southampton, started diagnosing cases on Long Island around 2011 and has treated more than 1,000 patients with the allergy since that time.

McGintee, an alpha-gal expert, said cases were once more common on the East End of Long Island but now show up in patients from various places including Port Jefferson, Islip, Stony Brook and Smithtown.

"It's following where the deer are going and the lone star tick is spreading," she said.

Lisa L. Colangelo reports in NEWSDAY that wildlife experts believe much of Suffolk County’s large tick population can be attributed to the warming climate and a growing wildlife population, in particular white-tail deer that provide a food source and mode of transportation for ticks.

The region's deer population, almost wiped out at the start of the 20th century due to over hunting and other issues, rebounded in recent decades due to conservation efforts and the lack of natural predators.

"The deer population on Long Island exploded," said entomologist Jody Gangloff-Kaufmann, associate director at Cornell’s Integrated Pest Management program. She is based in Babylon.

Scott Campbell, Suffolk County's chief entomologist, said the deer on Long Island are moving westward as their numbers grow and they search for food.

"Decades ago, people in Huntington, Smithtown, Islip didn’t have problems with ticks," said Campbell. There's less food for deer in forests, so they "come into residential areas to feed on the arborvitae or plantings in our yards and they bring those ticks with them."

If you do have a tick bite, Stony Brook Southampton Hospital's Tick-Borne Disease Clinic recommends taking a photo of it, removing it with pointy tweezers, and placing it in a container of alcohol. This will kill the tick and preserve it in case it's needed later to be identified and tested for bacteria that causes disease in humans.

Not all ticks carry bacteria and viruses that cause disease, but removing one quickly lowers the chance of transmission. Watch for symptoms including fever, headache, swollen joints and a rash, and follow up with your health care provider.

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A white-tailed deer with rare nearly all-white coloring has been frequenting a grassy yard on eastern Long Island.

A resident, who asked to be kept anonymous to protect the animal and whose exact location Newsday is keeping private, said the deer started showing up in his backyard, which borders a wooded area, in December, and he began snapping photos.

Tracy Tullis reports in NEWSDAY that the deer has a genetic trait called leucism, which causes a loss of pigment. Deer with leucism can be nearly all white, like this one, or spotted like a pinto pony — a variation commonly called piebald. The condition can affect nearly any animal, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish.

Leucism is the result of a recessive gene, so both parents must carry that gene in order to produce a leucistic fawn. Only about 1% of deer have this trait, according to The Nature Conservancy. It’s different from albinism, also a genetic mutation, which results in a complete lack of melanin. A leucistic deer will still have dark eyes, nose, and hooves.

Leslie Lupo, a wildlife biologist at the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation’s Stony Brook office, said she’d never seen a deer with leucism on Long Island.

This rare Long Island animal seems content to browse on tender spring greens, the east end resident said, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by a more conventionally attired companion.

"I was and still am very fortunate to see this deer," the man told NEWSDAY. "I realized how lucky I am when something that rare chooses your yard to feel safe in."

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Frustration with the slow pace of progress in the cleanup of the former Grumman superfund site in Calverton has residents and government officials fed up. Denise Civiletti reports on Riverheadlocal.com that in a grassroots effort, members of the Calverton Restoration Advisory Board, community members and county and town officials have scheduled their own meeting outside of the Navy’s twice-annual cleanup updates in order to receive data obtained through an investigation by Suffolk County health department officials. The meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday, April 28 at the Manorville Fire Department headquarters.

At the last Calverton Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) meeting on Feb. 10, the Navy would not allow Suffolk County health department staff to present well-testing data they’d collected over the prior year.

Calverton RAB member and clean water advocate Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said the county sampling was requested through the RAB, the data collection was completed, and members expected it would be shared as part of the Navy’s public process.

Addison Phoenix, the Navy’s current project manager for the Calverton site, said that Navy representatives and contractors are authorized to discuss “Navy-generated data associated with the environmental restoration program.”

Esposito called that decision “very unhelpful,” because it undermined the idea of agencies working together in partnership. Further, she said, the information would “educate members of the public” and “add to the understanding of what is a concern and what is not a concern” as a result of groundwater contamination at the site and a plume of contamination that has been migrating off-site.

Members of the RAB are appointed by the Navy to provide citizen input on the environmental cleanup and restoration of the former military manufacturing and testing facility. Its meetings are intended to provide the community with periodic updates from the Navy on the status of its investigation and cleanup/restoration efforts — as well as an opportunity to give the Navy feedback and ask questions.

The first Calverton RAB meeting was convened on April 28, 1998. The most recent meeting held in February was the Calverton RAB’s 62nd meeting.

The flyer being circulated by organizers of the April 28 community meeting bluntly states that the Navy has been dragging its feet for decades and “it’s time for accountability and action NOW!”

This coming Tuesday’s meeting is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. at Manorville Fire Department headquarters, 16 Silas Carter Road, Manorville.

More info available on line.

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In order to ensure effective communications during emergencies, the Southold Fire Department would like to install a wireless tower at its Baywater Avenue substation.

The Southold-Peconic Civic Association is hosting a community discussion about the Southold Fire Department’s planned wireless tower and Southold Town wireless rules this coming Saturday at 10 a.m. at the fire department substation, 650 Baywater Avenue in Southold.

The Southold Peconic Civic Association was founded in 2022 to preserve and enhance the unique hamlets of Southold and Peconic by promoting civic engagement, ensuring residents are given a forum to learn, consider and act upon issues that affect our north fork communities.

That discussion is this Saturday at 10 a.m. In the Southold Fire House on Baywater Avenue.

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Noise complaints linked to flights at East Hampton Town Airport in Wainscott have dropped by more than 61% over the past four years, a sharp decline as the number of overall flights also fell, according to a new report. Alek Lewis reports in NEWSDAY that aircraft noise complaints fell for four straight years — from 47,096 in 2021 to 18,169 in 2025. The number of flights logged at the airport declined by nearly 22%, from 32,298 in 2021 to 25,252 last year.

Flights at the airport spiked in 2021 during the coronavirus pandemic, which saw people forgo international trips and travel to the Hamptons instead, East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez said.

The steep drop holds across most aircraft types, including helicopters, which remain the largest source of the noise complaints. Helicopter operations generate about twice as many complaints as fixed-wing aircraft, according to the data.

For years, residents in Wainscott and across the East End have complained about incessant flight noise. Amid a debate on whether to close the airport, the Town of East Hampton has tried to set new rules to curb noise, but those efforts have been thwarted by lawsuits.

Recent measures targeted at noise reduction, including designated flight routes and a nighttime curfew — both voluntary — may be contributing to the shift, officials said this week. They took the decline as an encouraging sign.

Councilman Ian Calder-Piedmonte said, “…I'm encouraged … that there has been some improvement, and I also appreciate that it seems like there's a lot of voluntary compliance.”

Matthew Simon of HMMH, an aviation consulting firm based in Burlington, Massachusetts, presented the report to the town board during a work session on Tuesday.

Simon said most complaints occur during peak air traffic periods, particularly in summer and during high-traffic travel windows such as Thursday, Friday and Sunday evenings, as well as Monday mornings.

Many of the complaints stem from a relatively small number of households, Simon's data showed. While most residents filed only a handful of reports over the past five years, a limited number of households filed hundreds or even thousands of complaints.

Among the skeptics, Teresa McCaskie, who lives on the North Fork in Mattituck, said the drop reflects apathy rather than meaningful improvements.

“There’s a reduction in complaints because many people have given up,” McCaskie, who attended the presentation, told Newsday.

Shifting flight routes is only a temporary solution because “eventually somebody is going to be suffering from the noise,” said McCaskie, chairwoman of Southold Town’s Aircraft Noise Committee.

Barry Raebeck of Wainscott, who leads a group that advocates for restrictions at the airport, said he knows people who recently sold their homes because they lived under the flight path and couldn’t stand the noise. Most flights don’t occur overnight, making the curfew practically “non-existent,” he said.

The findings come as the airport remains the focus of a long-running debate. The Town of East Hampton attempted to close the public airport in 2022 and reopen it as a private facility, a move that would have given officials more control over air traffic and noise. The effort was met with lawsuits from aviation interests and adverse court rulings. The town remains in litigation.

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