When bird flu hit the UK, suffering seabirds died in their thousands. Australia’s wild flocks will soon do the same
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- H5N1 2.3.4.4b was detected in Australia two months ago in migratory seabirds likely arriving from subantarctic breeding grounds, with greater crested terns on South Australia's Limestone Coast already suffering a mass mortality event — the first for a native Australian bird.
- The Australian federal government published an analysis this week identifying almost 400 bird and mammal species at "high risk" or worse, and Prof John Woinarski of Charles Darwin University told the Guardian he expects the virus to spread across the continent within a year.
- Dr Sara Ryding of Deakin University led a risk model for all Australian bird families using global WOAH reports, ranking gannets and boobies most at risk, followed by cranes, darters, ducks/geese/swans, and gulls/terns/noddies, with pelicans, crows, falcons and kestrels also predicted to be susceptible.
- Australia's three resident pinniped species — the New Zealand fur seal, the Australian fur seal, and the already endangered Australian sea lion — face "very high" risk, with Argentinian marine biologist Dr Saia Bartes reporting that north Patagonia lost a third of its sea lions to the virus.
- Tens of thousands of seals and sea lions have died in outbreaks across Peru, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, plus on Australia's subantarctic Heard Island and McDonald Islands, where the virus causes severe neurological and respiratory symptoms.
- Prof James Pearce-Higgins of the British Trust for Ornithology, who watched sandwich tern colonies collapse in Norfolk, said weekly meetings with conservation groups and volunteers were critical to the UK response and offered cautious hope that long-lived bird populations may show resilience.
Why it matters: Almost half of Australia's bird species are endemic to the continent, meaning H5N1 — which has already killed millions of birds and infected more than 400 species globally — faces a wildlife population with no prior exposure. The Australian sea lion is already endangered, and government analysis rates all three local pinniped species at "very high" risk, raising the concrete possibility of population reductions in species on the edge before any treatment or vaccine pathway exists for wild animals.
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