Tick tick boom Lyme disease-carrying bugs are on the march

They're hard to spot, hungry and, after mosquitoes, the world's biggest vectors of disease. They're found in the countryside and urban parks and infestation rates are increasing. So what can be done about this little blood-sucking pest?

- Charlie Gilmour

Last summer I took my family on a walk through the woodlands around the hamlet of Ebernoe, in West Sussex. My children clambered on fallen trees, my partner and I hunted for mushrooms, and all the while we were being hunted by creatures more ancient than the last dinosaurs - and so hungry they would have fed on us for days.

In Ebernoe, as across the UK, ticks are on the rise. That day, we came home covered in them. One had sunk its serrated mouthparts into the back of my knee. My wife had one feeding on her flank. Another was lodged in the skin of my one-year-old's neck, its rear legs waggling as it sucked.

Until that day, I'd never been bitten by a tick-and I spent much of my childhood bothering bugs - but by the end of that summer I had a small jar full of them. That was also the summer of the great bedbug panic and headlice turned up in record numbers, too. What's up with bugs?

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) keeps tabs on ticks from a laboratory at Porton Down in Wiltshire. Every spring, scientists from its medical entomology team go on tick hunts, sweeping patches of England and Wales with big white flags, which the ticks latch on to, thinking they're prey. They also receive ticks in the post from the public. Their data shows a slow but steady 3.2% year on year increase of tick records in new areas, and in 2023 there were an unusual number of reports of tick infestations.