Deer arrived on Block Island by ferry on February 24, 1967, in wooden crates. Accounts differ on whether there were four or seven. Either way, an island with no natural predators now has a deer herd, and the deer brought ticks, and one of those ticks is changing what people here can eat.
The Block Island Times reported the full history on August 28 in a piece by Charlie Ballard, and the numbers in it are worth repeating.
Columbia University researcher Maria Diuk-Wasser surveyed the island from 2010 to 2020. In 2010 she found a single adult lone star tick. By 2019 the same survey turned up four adults, four nymphs, and 1,322 larvae. Statewide, the ratio of blacklegged ticks to lone star ticks went from 50-to-1 in 2015 to 3-to-1 in 2024.
The lone star tick carries alpha-gal syndrome, an allergy to red meat that shows up two to six hours after you eat it. The state health department has identified 66 cases in Rhode Island, nine of them Block Island residents. A spring survey by the Block Island Medical Center found 20 of 23 people who responded reported a positive test — that is a self-selected group, not a prevalence rate, but it tells you who is answering surveys about ticks out here.
The deer count itself is contested. A 2025 helicopter thermal survey by DEM and the University of Rhode Island put the herd at roughly 120, with a margin running from 45 to 959. Recent hunting seasons took 256, then 395, then about 300, then about 136.
A $10,000 tick surveillance pilot started in 2025. A bill to expand deer management failed; a resolution directing DEM to produce a management framework passed 70-0.
If you’re visiting: wear repellent, check yourself after the Greenway and Rodman’s Hollow, and know that a delayed reaction to a burger is a real thing here now. The Block Island Health Center runs the antibody blood test.