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Source: https://www.ft.com/content/dc4bc7e7-40d7-4aad-9582-ea8935aac090
A new strain of avian flu is decimating wild birds. Humans should worry
In a pre-Covid 19 world, the deaths of 86mn birds would have been a global news story
Madeleine Speed 7 hours ago
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https://www.ft.com/content/dc4bc7e7-40d7-4aad-9582-ea8935aac090
The sound of a seabird colony is overwhelming. The air is thick with kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills and shags. Shrieks and calls ricochet down the cliffs and the rhythmic flap-flap of wings cuts the air like stadium applause. Birds ride the wind in spirals, dive to the waves, burrow into shelves in the cliff face or settle on rocky promontories.
The summer breeding season is coming to an end for many of the species at St Abb’s Head nature reserve in Scotland’s East Lothian, 50 miles east of Edinburgh. Adult guillemots and their chicks have already migrated to their wintering grounds. I’m sitting on a grassy verge at the cliff’s edge, overlooking the rocky bay that houses the colony, with Ciaran Hatsell, a National Trust of Scotland ranger. “I get empty nest syndrome at the end of the season,” Hatsell says, half smiling. “It’s like 60,000 of your kids leaving all at once.”
Hatsell knows about loss. On June 5, he discovered the first signs of avian influenza in one of the gannets. Since then it has wiped out thousands of birds on the reserve. The flu is a highly pathogenic strain of the H5N1 virus. Since its early detections in poultry and wild birds in the spring of 2021, this new strain has killed more than 86 million birds in the US and Europe alone, predominantly through poultry culling, the mass slaughter of birds at sites where cases have been found. The European Food Safety Authority said the 2021-2022 epidemic season was the largest ever recorded on the continent.
Hundreds of thousands of wild birds have been affected too, particularly seabirds that live in densely packed colonies — optimal conditions for the spread of disease. The level of transmission in wild bird species is unprecedented. Whereas previous strains have affected a handful of species before petering out by the end of the winter, the current one has infected hundreds of species and hung around in populations year-round. In Rajasthan, India, locals looked on in alarm in November last year as Demoiselles cranes, elegant grey-blue birds with long black necks, began showing signs of lethargy and confusion. Three hundred of the three-foot-tall birds, which feature prominently in Indian poetry and mythology, are said to have died. The virus spread west, wiping out 8,000 common cranes in Israel, “the worst blow to wildlife in the country’s history”, according to the environment minister. At Greece’s Lake Mikri Prespa, home to the world’s largest Dalmatian pelican colony, more than half of the enormous, prehistoric-looking birds perished. An annual census of the species across the Balkans in May revealed a 40 per cent decline in the population compared to last year...
A new strain of avian flu is decimating wild birds. Humans should worry
In a pre-Covid 19 world, the deaths of 86mn birds would have been a global news story
Madeleine Speed 7 hours ago
Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://www.ft.com/tour.
https://www.ft.com/content/dc4bc7e7-40d7-4aad-9582-ea8935aac090
The sound of a seabird colony is overwhelming. The air is thick with kittiwakes, guillemots, razorbills and shags. Shrieks and calls ricochet down the cliffs and the rhythmic flap-flap of wings cuts the air like stadium applause. Birds ride the wind in spirals, dive to the waves, burrow into shelves in the cliff face or settle on rocky promontories.
The summer breeding season is coming to an end for many of the species at St Abb’s Head nature reserve in Scotland’s East Lothian, 50 miles east of Edinburgh. Adult guillemots and their chicks have already migrated to their wintering grounds. I’m sitting on a grassy verge at the cliff’s edge, overlooking the rocky bay that houses the colony, with Ciaran Hatsell, a National Trust of Scotland ranger. “I get empty nest syndrome at the end of the season,” Hatsell says, half smiling. “It’s like 60,000 of your kids leaving all at once.”
Hatsell knows about loss. On June 5, he discovered the first signs of avian influenza in one of the gannets. Since then it has wiped out thousands of birds on the reserve. The flu is a highly pathogenic strain of the H5N1 virus. Since its early detections in poultry and wild birds in the spring of 2021, this new strain has killed more than 86 million birds in the US and Europe alone, predominantly through poultry culling, the mass slaughter of birds at sites where cases have been found. The European Food Safety Authority said the 2021-2022 epidemic season was the largest ever recorded on the continent.
Hundreds of thousands of wild birds have been affected too, particularly seabirds that live in densely packed colonies — optimal conditions for the spread of disease. The level of transmission in wild bird species is unprecedented. Whereas previous strains have affected a handful of species before petering out by the end of the winter, the current one has infected hundreds of species and hung around in populations year-round. In Rajasthan, India, locals looked on in alarm in November last year as Demoiselles cranes, elegant grey-blue birds with long black necks, began showing signs of lethargy and confusion. Three hundred of the three-foot-tall birds, which feature prominently in Indian poetry and mythology, are said to have died. The virus spread west, wiping out 8,000 common cranes in Israel, “the worst blow to wildlife in the country’s history”, according to the environment minister. At Greece’s Lake Mikri Prespa, home to the world’s largest Dalmatian pelican colony, more than half of the enormous, prehistoric-looking birds perished. An annual census of the species across the Balkans in May revealed a 40 per cent decline in the population compared to last year...