H5N1 Poses 'Very High Risk' to WA's Black Swans
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- Black swans are ranked "very high risk" for H5N1 under a commonwealth national risk assessment, and University of Queensland virologist Kirsty Short says the species lacks a key immune protein involved in recognising viral infections, making them more likely to die than survive once infected.
- Ornithologist Floyd Holmes of Phoenix Environmental Sciences warns that because WA black swans in the south-west congregate and breed in single locations, an infected bird could wipe out an entire local colony at once.
- South Australia has already recorded three mass mortality events involving more than 1,000 greater crested terns since H5N1 reached Australian shores, nine weeks after a migratory bird brought the virus to WA and five years after the variant hit North America.
- WA Environment Minister Matthew Swinbourn says the state is now testing a vaccine in five endangered black cockatoos at Perth zoo and exploring vaccination feasibility for black swans, calling it "just one tool in the fight."
- The federal government has spent $113 million on bird flu preparedness including $2 million on vaccine doses from US animal health company Zoetis — a product originally designed for chickens that is not registered for wildlife and requires two doses weeks apart, making wild-population vaccination largely infeasible.
- Vaccination efforts have begun on 5,000 little penguins in Victorian wild colonies, a project considered possible only because those colonies are well-studied, habituated to humans, and return nightly to the same burrows.
- BirdLife Australia's Lindall Kidd says WA is playing catch-up after preparedness funding flowed to agriculture rather than wildlife, warning birds already pressured by habitat loss and climate change now face "death by a thousand cuts."
Why it matters: Western Australia's official state bird and a totemic species for the Noongar people could be locally wiped out in south-west breeding colonies if H5N1 takes hold, exposing a preparedness gap in which $113m in federal funding prioritised agriculture over at-risk wildlife like swans and pelicans living in urban areas.
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