Following a series of outbreaks in recent years, bird flu has resurfaced as one of the leading causes of bird deaths across the UK. Until recent weeks, the latest outbreak of the disease, also known as bird flu or, for scientists, highly pathogenic bird flu, was mainly treated as a problem for chickens and other domestic birds. This provoked local responses, such as slaughter, and farmers were ordered to keep the animals indoors for six months during the winter, which is why the UK had a period without eggs in the wild.
But reports of a large number of wild seabirds found dead in Scotland, and increasingly in England and Wales, suggest that bird flu is now common in wild birds in most of northern Britain. I myself came across a number of these birds off the coast of Northumberland.
Scenes like these will make the crisis much more visible to the general public and, of course, they will wonder what else we can do to deal with the outbreak.
The bird flu outbreak 2021-22
The 2021-22 outbreak is a global problem, with cases of the virulent H5N1 subtype detected in West Africa, Asia and almost every country in Europe and North America. It is primarily a disease of domesticated birds, where it is believed to have originated, and has resulted in the killing of hundreds of millions of birds, including 38 million in the U.S. this year alone.
In the UK, the disease was first detected in October 2021. As elsewhere, the outbreak was largely limited to poultry and farmers were forced to slaughter 500,000 chickens and other birds. . In response, the UK established an avian flu prevention zone that includes 10km buffer zones around detected cases, with restrictions on bird movement and improved biosecurity.
During the winter, several wild bird populations were reported to have been affected by bird flu, such as the great skua, pink-footed geese and barnacle geese. These included the massacre of 4,000 birds at Solway Firth, which accounted for a third of Svalbard’s wintering barnacle population in the area.
As spring has become summer, there is now no doubt that bird flu is spreading to a wider diversity of wild birds in the UK. For some species, this probably reflects their return to summer breeding colonies and the increased mixing it entails (bird flu is spread by contact with saliva or feces).
As this breeding season reaches its peak, a wide variety of seabirds have been affected, including large squirrels, ivy ducks, fulmars, woodpeckers, gannets and guillemots. The United Kingdom is home to more than half of the world’s population of gannets and large squirrels, both of which are officially recognized as birds of moderate conservation concern (“amber state”). Avian flu adds to the litany of problems facing these birds, from climate change to the mess in abandoned fishing gear, and raises concerns from organizations such as RSPB and Birdlife, which already consider that this outbreak is the worst it has ever faced in the UK.
More resources are needed
Conservation organizations have called for more resources to help control and address the problem. Many bird watchers and reserve managers are already working on the nature reserves most affected by bird flu and will therefore be an important part of the solution. We could also reduce the level of human disturbance in particularly sensitive places, for example, by introducing buffer zones or seasonal restrictions.
Large escarpments were already threatened by fishing lines and climate change. They are now fighting the flu. Erni / blind
But broadly speaking, we just need more surveillance for bird flu so we can get a better idea of the problem. It would also mean giving relevant government departments and agencies the resources they need to control and test more wild birds.
In summer, bird flu keeps the infection in the environment for up to 18 days. Thus, the large number of dead birds on the coast with possible infections has a continuous route of transmission to birds of prey and feed on carrion, especially seagulls, which are known to be susceptible to bird flu. Increasing the number of carcasses collected would have the added benefit of eliminating the possibility of carrion feeders becoming infected and therefore further infecting other birds.
Since some of these seabirds can stretch long distances in search of food (up to 400 km for alcats, for example), we will need a national approach, with coordination between the four nations of the United Kingdom. And because the virus has been repeatedly transmitted between domestic populations and wild bird populations, we should also look at biosecurity measures in the poultry industry.
What next
What does this mean for the general public? Although bird flu is a zoonotic disease like COVID-19, the risk to human health is very low, and cases in humans have arisen almost exclusively from close contact between bird caregivers and their animals. The advice for the public is not to touch any dead birds you see and report them.
If you feed wild birds, remember to wash and disinfect the feeders every week and clean the bird baths every day, as bird flu is mainly transmitted by saliva and feces. And if you go for a walk with your dog, watch him more closely when you are on the beach or in the water, and use a leash when you are in a nature reserve or see a dead bird.
There is no doubt that increasing the visibility of the dead will bring home the scale of the problem to the general public. The bird flu has now “reached” our minds, and will take on more prominence as summer continues and the holidays begin. While the risk to humans is very low, it serves as a further reminder of how we are connected to nature and how our interactions with the natural world have huge consequences for what we consider “human” systems.