Bird flu has arrived within the penguin haven of South Georgia island, sparking fears of deaths on a scale of ‘global concern’.
Home to just about a million king penguins – half the world’s inhabitants – South Georgia had largely escaped the ravages of avian flu till now.
Despite the remoteness of this South Atlantic island, consultants are nonetheless stunned it’s taken many years for the virus to contaminate the penguins residing there.
They pack the seashores of their tens of millions every breeding season in a spectacle of courting, mating and elevating their young – a density excellent for the speedy unfold of illness.
‘I liken South Georgia to the Alps with Serengeti-style wildlife around it’, Dr Norman Ratcliffe, a chicken ecologist from the British Antarctic Survey, told BBC News.
‘The wildlife concentrations around the coast are just phenomenal – multiple species of penguins, albatrosses, and seals.
“If bird flu were to take a hold and cause very high mortality across the island, it would be of conservation concern globally.
‘But at the moment, it does seem to be somewhat limited in the way it’s spreading.’
The virus has been detected in 5 gentoo penguins and 5 king penguins, simply as this 12 months’s breeding season ends.
Macaronis and chinstraps additionally reside on the island.
Its full impression received’t be seen till the penguins return to the British Overseas Territory for the subsequent breeding season on the finish of this 12 months.
‘We don’t understand how simply the virus can get into completely different penguin species, what kind of scientific illness it’d trigger and the way quickly it’d unfold between birds themselves’, Dr Ashley Banyard advised the BBC.
He leads the avian virology workgroup on the UK’s Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA), which examined the confirmed circumstances at its International Reference Laboratory for Avian Influenza in Weybridge.
Penguins aren’t the primary species to fall sufferer to the virus on South Georgia.
It was first recognized within the island’s brown skua, massive scavenging seabirds, in October 2023, the BBC reported.
Soon after it was present in kelp gulls, and in January circumstances had been confirmed in elephant and fur seals.
The avian flu has additionally unfold to Antarctic terns and wandering albatrosses.
Bird flu, formally known as High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI), is within the midst of a worldwide surge.
The ongoing outbreak of the extremely contagious H5N1 pressure of the virus has ’induced devastation in animal populations’, in accordance with the World Health Organisation.
It’s killed numerous wild and domesticated birds world wide, and even at the very least one polar bear in Alaska because it spreads to different species.
The outbreak additionally killed a nine-year-old boy who ate contaminated poultry in Cambodia, which has seen 5 fatalities this 12 months.
Although people often solely catch chicken flu from contaminated animals, the avian flu is a probable candidate for inflicting the subsequent huge pandemic if it mutates to permit human-to-human transmission.
When it does infect people, it carries a mortality price round 50%.
Researchers warn the virus is just a few mutations or a sudden gene swap away from having the ability to unfold from human to human.
Dr Nicole Robb, an assistant professor at Warwick University and a lecturer at Oxford University lecturer, mentioned: ‘To date, there have been no sustained cases of human-to-human transmission.
‘However, if it does happen it will be a serious situation.’
The extra chicken flu spreads, the extra H5N1 has the prospect to mutate.
Before reaching the penguins of South Georgia, it had already contaminated the gentoos 932 miles west on the Falklands, the BBC reported.
Experts consider skuas could have introduced chicken flu to South Georgia and Antarctica.
Two lifeless skuas contaminated with chicken flu had been not too long ago discovered by Argentine scientists close to their Primavera base in Antarctica.
Dr Ratcliffe mentioned: ‘Skuas winter around South America as do giant petrels and we think these birds are the vector that bought the disease into South Georgia.
‘Skuas are constantly in amongst the penguin colonies, scavenging and preying on eggs and chicks.
‘If there’s a shock, it’s that it’s taken this lengthy for the virus to be manifested within the penguins.’
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