With the May long weekend creeping around the corner many Canadians will be hitting the woods for some camping and offroad activities. 

It's important after leaving tall grassy areas and heavy woods to do a tick check, this means searching your body for the possibility of a tick attempting to burry into your skin.

There are three different species of ticks that are well known to Alberta. They include the rocky mountain tick and moose ticks which are the most common ticks found in Alberta and the western black-legged tick. 

When people generally think about ticks they are associated with many different diseases but most specifically Lyme disease. However, the only known tick to carry Lyme disease in Alberta is the Western Black-Legged Tick.

Dr David Strong from Alberta Health Services says that there has been an increase in ticks being found in Alberta but that's only because of a program the government created to find ticks and help determine if they are disease carriers.

"It's still very rare that we actually find these ticks, although the number of submitted ticks have gone up we have not seen a particular spike in the Western Black-Legged Tick."

In 2016, there were a total of 2781 tickets submitted to the program and out of those 35 were black-legged ticks that tested positive for Lyme disease.

From 2013-2016 there was almost a three times increase in the number of ticks being submitted by Albertans. In the province. the risk of being bitten by a black-legged tick is low and being bitten by one carrying Lyme disease is even lower but you still need to be careful. 

"We are just advising people to check for ticks if they are bitten by a tick there is a program we have that you can remove the tick safely and send it to one of our environment offices." 

To learn more about the tick submitting process click here

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