Just watching the news about Australia being the last continent to record the H5 bird flu virus and now there has been a confirmed case... Bummer but i guess it was inevitable. It impacts birds and marine mammals like seals and sea lions.

We can report crook birds or marine mammals to ​ Emergency Animal  Disease Hotline 1800 675 888. Early detection might help manage the spread of the virus.

Worth bearing in mind since a lot of us travel remote coastal areas.

In tassie we are always coming across albatross, petrels, sea eagles, seals etc and its sucks seeing them threatened.

😢

Yet the mouse plague that could decimate our agriculture is hardly news. Depends what the media push. The headline in the paper here was all about bird flu threat and implies Covid-like threat to humans cos they love to stir everyone up.

some of the sea birds migrate 50,000km. if they get sneezed on once every 1000km thats a lot of viruses 🤔

But yeh i think alot of the concern is that some birds like swans dont have good immune systems..

^^^ yes that’s the truth. But not what the paper implied with headline and first couple of paragraphs
FFS it was one bird on the beach that is 50km from nearest town or agriculture.
and the headline was WA HOME OF DEADLY OUTBREAK and ‘patient zero’ with a byline of ‘ bird flu season - Australia’s first suspected case of deadly H5 strain’. What utter claptrap. Old people all stressing themselves there’s a new thing that’s gonna kill ppl.


I gather seabird toilet paper is already in short supply.


media knobheads

This isn't a new thing. Was on a trip in the Antarctic this past (their) summer and onboard were a couple of Australian researchers taking samples trying to determine which populations of birds had been affected by the flu. Spent a dinner with them discussing their work. Bird and marine mammal (seal) populations in the colder southern climates have been severely impacted by this.

Yes, the media makes money by hyping stuff up but this virus is nasty work and has already demonstrated its impact on animal populations.

www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bird-flu-wiped-out-nearly-half-of-the-females-in-the-worlds-largest-elephant-seal-population-drone-images-suggest-180987699/
www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/birds/bird-flu-antarctica

We’ve already had this variant infect humans.

I suppose many folks will encourage the animals to refuse the vax.