The idea is to build up a database to help estimate the risk of exposure of humans to ticks and tick bites in Scotland and many of you helped this citizen science project by Scotland’s Rural College last year by reporting the presence, or absence, of ticks after you’d been orienteering or doing other outdoor activities in Scotland.
Preliminary results have been released by SRUC. Orienteers are an obvious group to target and you can see evidence of the 2018 campaign where SRUC folk attended some of the larger events in Speyside, Moray and Deeside to raise awareness and gather data.
(Guess who submitted the purple walking report in the middle of The Minch? Who do you know with a mischevious side to their personalities and that knows an orienteer with a boat?)
There’s a lot more analysis to do yet and the project will be looking for comparative data from this year between 1/3/19 and 31/10/19 so follow the links above and register or dig out your username and password from last year and get reporting.
And if you think March is too early for ticks, it’s not! Rachel had one after the British Night Champs at Dinnet tail end of Feb.
On a more serious note, Ewen Rennie sent a link to a petition to improve The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) upcoming guidance on Lyme Disease that orienteers might be interested in.
GRAMPIAN ORIENTEERS 