• 6 months ago
An international team of scientists have detected the further spread of a deadly strain of bird flu in antarctica. The first case of high pathogenicity avian influenza on mainland Antarctica was confirmed in February. Last month an international expedition headed to the icy continent to monitor its spread.

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00:00It's a strain of bird flu that first emerged quite a few years ago in poultry farms in
00:10China and had spread through to Europe. And predominantly there'd been outbreaks in poultry
00:16during this time. And then around the end of 2021 there was a slight change in the virus
00:23which led to it causing large-scale mortality in seabird colonies around the world. So since
00:32that point in time we've had over hundreds of millions of seabirds dying throughout Europe,
00:39America, and then of course South America we started to see mass die-offs of sea lions and
00:44seabirds as well. So we were very, very concerned about the risk to Antarctic wildlife and started
00:52to prepare this season for what might happen. We identified four new locations where the virus
01:00has been confirmed. This was mainly in skewers, so along the Trinity Peninsula, so at Hope Bay,
01:10Beak Island, and Devil Island we came across dead skewers which tested positive for the virus.
01:18And unfortunately at Beak Island we also discovered a mass mortality event, so
01:2350 out of the 130 birds present had died and it was an active ongoing outbreak at that location.
01:32And then further to the east we found more skewers at Paulette Island as well,
01:40were confirmed to have bird flu. Unfortunately we can't do anything to stop
01:46avian influenza once it does hit the populations and the colonies. So a lot of it is about
01:54mitigation of our activities and ensuring that we have appropriate biosecurity measures in place
02:00to reduce the chance of us aiding in the transmission, but it will most likely spread by
02:06other wildlife species. So we do need a lot more research into understanding the virus,
02:14the impacts that it may have on wildlife species in the area, and then to look at ways of reducing
02:22avian influenza spread on other continents.

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