Tick season starting early this year due to warm winter, experts say

Experts are warning people to be extra vigilant about checking themselves and their pets after spending time outdoors.

We may be going through a cool patch of weather in Montreal, but this past winter was unusuallywarm.

"We definitely had an earlier start," said Karen Joy Goldenberg, a veterinarian at Pierrefonds Animal Hospital.

Ticks are active above four degrees and this year, that happened in early April,Goldenbergsaid.

The parasites can carry a variety of diseases, including Lymedisease.

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Goldenberg said cases of Lyme disease are up at her clinic,but prevention has improved as well.

Dr. Vett Lloyd, who studies ticks at Mount Alison University,says that the diseases they carryare serious, and the best way to deal with them is to avoid getting a tick at all.

"The ticks are here, the ticks are here to stay, so we have to learn to live with them," she said.

Lloydthe best thing you can do is check yourself, your kids, and your pets for ticks when you come back in from time outside.

Climate change a factor

Across Canada, morepeople are contractingLymediseaseand federal health officials are partly blaming global warming for a dramatic uptick in cases.

"As climates change across the country, that is certainly one of the major factors why we believe that it has spread in recent years,'' Health Minister Jane Philpott told reporters after addressing a national conference onLymediseasein Ottawa on Monday.

In 2015, there were 700 new cases ofLymediseasereported to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), up from 140 cases in 2009.

Lymeis now being diagnosed in southern B.C., Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

But PHAC chief Dr. Gregory Taylor said those figures are likely under-reported.

"We have estimates it could be thousands of Canadians getting infected, not just several hundred, and that is worrisome,'' Taylor said in an interview from Ottawa.

Some estimates project that Canada could see from 10,000 to 20,000 a cases a year if the ticks that carry the bacterium continue to expand their range into other parts of Canada.