Amid growing concern about Lyme disease, selectmen in Edgartown, Aquinnah and West Tisbury this week agreed to join the call for adding another two-week deer hunt next January.

Selectmen in Oak Bluffs and Chilmark last night threw their full support behind a plan to add a second two-week shotgun season for deer in January next year.

The spread of disease-carrying ticks on Martha’s Vineyard is a public health crisis, a biologist and longtime Island physician said this week.

Vineyard residents are highly concerned about ticks and tick-borne illness, according to a newly-released community survey conducted in August.

Tuesdays in the Newsroom, the Gazette’s monthly discussion series, resumes Sept. 13 with a conversation about ticks and tick-borne illness.

A recent survey on the Cape has revealed Powassan, a potentially fatal disease carried by deer ticks. Despite a growing list of tick-borne diseases in the region, there are no plans for tick surveillance on the Vineyard.

The Martha’s Vineyard Tick-Borne Illness Reduction Initiative will host a talk at the Chilmark Community Center on Tuesday, August 16.

Scientists at MIT are hoping to prevent Lyme disease on the Vineyard by releasing large numbers of genetically engineered mice into the wild. The project would still be years down the road.

As tick-borne diseases continue to be a source of growing public health concern on the Vineyard, a panel discussion convenes Wednesday to discuss a potential new approach to curbing Lyme and other infections.

Martha’s Vineyard may soon join a growing list of communities in New England that have taken aim at white-tailed deer to reduce tick populations.