Ticks and Cowboys

Michael Bolfing is one of the only cowboys in the world who will retire with a government pension — that is, if he retires. “Most guys don’t retire, they just die,” he says of the other employees of the United States Cattle Fever Tick Eradication Program. Bolfing is tall and thin, with short-cropped hair and a Texas drawl. His horse is a companion, not a pet. When Bolfing is asked its name he says, “It’s got a lot, but you probably can’t write any of them down.” “Tick riders” are saving the United States an estimated $1 billion every year by keeping a worldwide scourge out of the country: Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus and its cousin, R.(B.) annulatus, otherwise known as two species of cattle fever ticks. These are no mere pests. They transmit parasites that can kill cattle in a week; they can also suck a herd dry, cutting the weight of a steer by 20 percent in a year. Cattle ticks drastically reduce meat and milk production, and trash leather quality. Bill Coble, Webb County Tick Supervisor, opens a portable spray-dip machine used for treating cattle with a tickicide.1 At the Webb County administrative office, livestock records are recorded on a chalkboard.2 U.S. Cattle Fever Tick Eradication Program Director Edwin Bowers near the border between the U.S. and Mexico.3 1Bill Coble, Webb County Tick Supervisor, opens a portable spray-dip machine used for treating cattle with a tickicide. 2At the Webb County administrative office, livestock records are recorded on a chalkboard. 3U.S. Cattle Fever Tick Eradication Program Director Edwin Bowers near the border between the U.S. and Mexico. In short, they have the capacity to decimate the Texas cattle industry, but haven’t, largely thanks to cowboys like Bolfing. Monday to Friday, he rides the Rio Grande, looking for stray cows and horses from Mexico that might be ferrying cattle ticks across the border. In 1906, the U.S. went to war on cattle ticks. The government created the tick rider program, and by 1943, cattle ticks were declared eradicated everywhere but the permanent quarantine zone — an 800-kilometer strip along the Rio Grande that ranges from a few hundred yards to a few miles across. Before any animals can leave the buffer, they have to be checked for ticks and dunked in pesticides. The U.S. is the only country that has waged a successful battle against the ticks so far. Now, just 68 tick riders hold the line against invasion. Despite the many precautions, outbreaks happen. During the last major flare-up in 2007, 1.5 million acres beyond the permanent buffer zone were quarantined. Affected ranchers across South Texas dipped their animals regularly for months at a time or rotated pastures to starve the ticks. Today, there are still 35,000 acres of quarantined ranch land beyond the permanent buffer. Any cattle that come into the U.S. go through a strict inspection. If one animal has cattle ticks, the whole herd is sent back. Clean cows are “dipped”: dunked horn-to-tail in a deep vat of tickicide. But scientists have found ticks resistant to major classes of pesticides in Mexico and around the world...more