Adding another two-week deer hunt next January is a plan that deserves widespread support as the Island boards of health work to stem the ominous spread of tick-borne diseases on the Vineyard.

Selectmen in Island towns are getting behind the idea of the added deer hunt. Richard Johnson, the Vineyard-based biologist and unofficial Island tick czar working on behalf of the six Vineyard boards of health, has won support for the proposal from town leaders in Chilmark, Oak Bluffs, Edgartown, West Tisbury and Aquinnah. He is scheduled to appear before the Tisbury selectmen next Tuesday. If selectmen in that town agree, letters will go out to Massachusetts Fish and Wildlife from all six towns formally requesting a two-week shotgun season for deer to take place a year from now.

Though the initiative is just a piece of a broader effort to control ticks, it is one step that can be accomplished without legislative action or expenditure of tax money. Fish and Wildlife officials have indicated they will make the necessary regulatory changes to allow it, but only if the proposal has unanimous support from all six Island towns.

The proposal has not been without its critics, including some hunters. Two Island hunters air their concerns in letters to the editor in Friday’s edition.

The plan may not be perfect, and it is true that the science around the spread of tick-borne diseases is complicated and still evolving. But it is important to note that the added deer hunt is not an idea that came out of the blue. The boards of health have approached the issue methodically and with due caution over a long period of time, as part of the Martha’s Vineyard tick borne-illness prevention program.

Critics of attacking the tick problem by killing more deer often suggest that the white-footed mouse is the bigger culprit in the spread of Lyme disease. In fact, both have a role in providing blood meals to developing ticks, but it is far more difficult — and expensive — to eradicate millions of mice.

An Islandwide survey conducted by the Gazette last August in cooperation with the Island boards of health found broad support for using experienced local hunters to reduce the deer herd. Importantly, the idea won equal support among people who identified themselves as hunters as those who said they do not hunt.

Thanks to a grant from the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital, Mr. Johnson has been in the field for the past seven years, intensively studying ticks and their habitat. As explained by Mr. Johnson to the selectmen in recent days, here are a few things we now know:

• Deer do play a key part in the life cycle of ticks.

• The deer population on the Island is at an all-time high, estimated at about four thousand animals, a density that is roughly twice the state average.

• The harvest by hunters has stayed the same in recent years, with an annual take of six to eight hundred deer.

• Available land for hunting has decreased due to development and other barriers, including private property owners and conservation groups closing off lands to hunting.

• Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses are at epidemic levels, threatening the public health.

As Mr. Johnson makes his rounds, the boards of health are working on a plan to accommodate the two-week shotgun season next January, including a place for hunters to hang deer, butchering services and distribution of venison through the Island food pantry and senior centers.

Until there is a better or more economical way to address the public health crisis posed by ticks, reducing the deer herd by expanding the hunting season is a prudent measure and one that deserves Islandwide support.