Seriously -- I didn't realize how bad it could get until I got to Vienna and a local told me that residents of the city are required to be inoculated against ticks because they can make you brain dead, epilepsy, etc, and I didn't believe it... but it's real https://www.iamat.org/country/austria/risk/tick-borne-enceph...

No clue how important they are in the ecosystem, but from the perspective of insects which piss me off, I'm on board 100%.

I read somewhere that they are not important and that is good enough source for me. It could have been written on a post-it for me to support an eradication campaign.

I hate ticks.

There is a joke that ticks and lice were crucial for human evolution, since removing them from each other helped to make monkeys spend time together:)