The bird flu viruses, known as H5, are continually evolving into new strains that can infect the same host at the same time. “Alarm bells were ringing straight away about the speed in which they were getting it pre-breeding season this time, rather than post-breeding season,” says Kelly. This year, however, when the virus showed up among birds soon after arriving at their summertime colonies in Shetland, local experts knew something new was happening. Previous bird flu outbreaks have generally struck wildfowl in their wintering grounds and subsided when they dispersed at the end of the season. “This is a new thing that wasn't on the radar.” (Learn how plastic is harming seabirds.) “We've been banging the drum for a long time, as many conservationists have, about the declines in seabirds and the pressures that they face,” says RSPB’s Kevin Kelly. Just as the ocean misses sharks when they’re overfished, declining seabirds could also have major impacts and likely upset the balance of ecosystems, including those that support major fisheries. In July, bird flu was confirmed among unusually high numbers of stranded, dying seals off the coast of Maine. Over the last few months, the list of mass mortalities among wild species has been growing, in particular among breeding colonies where birds cluster in large numbers, from Dalmatian pelicans in Greece and knots in the Netherlands, to Caspian terns on Wisconsin’s Lake Michigan. Shetland saw some of the earliest outbreaks this year in Europe, possibly brought by waterbirds migrating north toward their breeding grounds in the Arctic. These are a small fraction of all the dead birds across the islands. He thinks these corpses could accelerate the spread of the virus.
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Every week or so, Kelly zips himself into full PPE gear, and gathers and incinerates up to 50 corpses scattered around inland water bodies where live birds gather to bathe. There is no euthanasia program for suffering birds-there are too many for that. “It’s grim,” says Kevin Kelly, Shetland site manager for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) who’s been witnessing the disaster unfold on the ground. (See photos of how bird flu affected China.) This year’s strain is hitting seabirds especially hard.
Sometime in the last year, a strain of the virus mutated and became even more transmissible. Since then, the virus has killed millions of poultry and in the past jumped lethally to humans. Also known as bird flu, the virus making these birds sick can be traced back to a goose farm in China in 1996. Unauthorized use is prohibited.ĭead and dying birds like these were what first alerted people to the 2022 outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza.