The quantity of ticks in the eastern US is insane. I would be in favor of a serious look at eradicating them.
It isn’t too bad in the Mountain West comparatively in my experience, though you have some bad areas in California. I am an outdoorsy person. While I live in the western US my experiences in the woods of the eastern US still stick in my mind. In some areas it was literally crawling with ticks.
I currently live in Seattle. The western side of the Cascade Mountains are essentially devoid of ticks and no one knows why, it is a bit of a scientific mystery. Years of tromping through the bush and I’ve never seen one here, which is great. It does make me wonder if there is something in the ecosystem here that could be adapted to mitigate tick populations elsewhere.
Come down to Ojai valley. They'll be crawling all over you in no time. I grew up in the east. Most of the ticks we had at least couldn't even carry Lyme or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. California is wild.
It isn’t too bad in the Mountain West comparatively in my experience, though you have some bad areas in California. I am an outdoorsy person. While I live in the western US my experiences in the woods of the eastern US still stick in my mind. In some areas it was literally crawling with ticks.
I currently live in Seattle. The western side of the Cascade Mountains are essentially devoid of ticks and no one knows why, it is a bit of a scientific mystery. Years of tromping through the bush and I’ve never seen one here, which is great. It does make me wonder if there is something in the ecosystem here that could be adapted to mitigate tick populations elsewhere.