After a series of localized outbreaks over the past few years, bird flu has re-emerged as a major driver of bird deaths in the UK. Until the last few weeks, the latest outbreak – also known as bird flu or, according to scientists, highly pathogenic avian influenza – has been treated primarily as a problem for chickens and other poultry. This provoked localized reactions such as destruction, and farmers were ordered to keep the animals indoors for six months during the winter, leaving the United Kingdom free of eggs.
But reports of large numbers of wild seabirds found dead in Scotland, and increasingly in England and Wales, suggest that bird flu is now prevalent among wild birds in much of northern Britain. Personally, I met a number of these birds on the shores of Northumberland.
Scenes like these will make the crisis far more visible to the general public, and they will naturally wonder what more we can do to deal with the outbreak.
The outbreak of bird flu in 2021-22
The outbreak of 2021-22 is a global problem, with cases of the virulent H5N1 subtype found in West Africa, Asia and almost every country in Europe and North America. It is primarily a poultry disease that is thought to have originated and has killed hundreds of millions of birds, including 38 million in the United States this year alone.
In the United Kingdom, the disease was first detected in October 2021. As elsewhere, the outbreak was initially largely limited to poultry and farmers were forced to kill 500,000 chickens and other birds. In response, the United Kingdom has set up an area for the prevention of avian influenza, including 10 km buffer zones around open cases, with restrictions on bird movement and increased biosecurity.
During the winter, a number of wild bird populations were reported to be affected by bird flu, including the great bustard, pink-footed geese and goose bites. These include the mass deaths of 4,000 birds of the Solway Firth, representing a third of the Svalbard geese population that spend the winter in the area.
As spring has become summer, there is no doubt that bird flu is spreading to a greater variety of wild birds in the UK. For some species, this probably reflects their return to summer breeding colonies and the increased mixing it involves (bird flu is spread by contact with saliva or feces).
As this breeding season reaches its peak, a wide range of seabirds have been affected, including great bustards, mallard ducks, fulmar, terns, terns and squirrels. The United Kingdom owns more than half of the world’s population of lap and bigmouth bass, both of which are officially recognized as birds of moderate conservation concern (“amber status”). Avian influenza adds to the many problems these birds face – from climate change to entanglement in abandoned fishing gear – and raises concerns among organizations such as the RSPB and Birdlife, which already see the outbreak as the worst. the kingdom was once upright.
More resources are needed
Conservation organizations have called for more resources to help monitor and address the problem. Many bird keepers and reserve managers are already working on nature reserves most affected by bird flu, and so they will be an important part of the decision. We could also reduce the level of anxiety from people in particularly sensitive areas, for example by introducing buffer zones or seasonal restrictions.
Large sea urchins were already threatened by fishing rods and climate change. Now they are fighting the flu. Erni / shutterstock
But more generally, we just need more bird flu surveillance to get a better idea of the problem. This will also mean providing the relevant government departments and agencies with the resources they need to monitor and test more wild birds.
In summer, bird flu persists in the environment for up to 18 days. So the large number of dead birds along the coast with possible infections is a continuing route for the transmission of birds of prey and carrion feeders, 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 thus further infecting other birds.
Given that some of these seabirds can travel great distances in search of food – up to 400 km for caterpillars, for example – we will need a national approach to this, with coordination between the four nations of the United Kingdom. And since the virus has been transmitted repeatedly between domestic stocks and wild bird populations, we also need to reconsider biosecurity measures in the poultry industry.
What next
What does this mean for the general public? Although bird flu is a zoonotic disease such as COVID-19, the risk to human health is very low, and human cases have arisen almost exclusively from close contact between bird keepers and their animals. The advice to the public is not to touch the dead birds you see and to report them.
If you feed wild birds, be sure to wash and disinfect feeders every week and clean bird baths every day, as bird flu is transmitted mainly through saliva and feces. And if you’re out and about walking the dog, keep an eye on them when you’re on the beach or on the water, and use an occasion when you’re in a nature reserve or see a dead bird.
There is no doubt that increased visibility of deaths will bring the problem to the attention of the general public. Bird flu has already “arrived” in our minds and will become increasingly important as summer continues and the holidays begin. Although the risk to humans is very low, it serves as another reminder of how connected we are to nature and how our interactions with the natural world have enormous implications for what we consider “human” systems.
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