Experts warn of threat posed by bird flu<\/a><\/p>\nThe black swan, the Tasmanian devil and Australian sea lions are among the species at risk if a deadly strain of avian influenza takes hold in Australia, experts are warning.<\/p>\n
“And so what we’re about here is trying to do the preparatory work so that we’ve got options to respond when it does come.”<\/p>\n
The task is made more challenging by the fact quolls are not very social, particularly in their breeding season.<\/p>\n
“Eastern quolls are tricky to keep together because at different stages of their lifestyles they fight with each other,” Dr Cummings said.<\/p>\n
“So depending on what time of the year we might bring some in, that’ll determine how many we can bring in and how we locate them together and keep them together and look after them through time.”<\/p>\n
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Mulligans Flat wildlife project manager Dean Maxworthy says any quolls in the quarantine penns will be checked on daily. (ABC News)<\/p>\n
Mulligans Flat wildlife project manager Dean Maxworthy said the 16 cages had to be specially built to ensure the quarantined quolls could not escape.<\/p>\n
“We will have a skirt that sits \u2026 underneath the ground so when they dig down \u2026 they’ll hit that skirt and hopefully won’t keep on digging into the other side,” he said.<\/p>\n
“These guys are going to be checked on every single day to check on their welfare.”<\/p>\n
Mr Maxworthy said along with ensuring the quolls were safely in their pens, the team would also be making sure they did not get too bored in quarantine.<\/p>\n
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“They are technically wild quolls, so we’re going to have to keep an eye on them and make sure they’re not going too stir crazy,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But they’re going to have lots of little hidey holes and stuff as well.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got a bunch of hollows and stuff that we’re going to put inside there and create them some really cool little dens so that they feel as safe as they possibly can inside the enclosures.”<\/p>\n
Dr Cummings said another part of the preparatory work was making sure the sanctuary had food for the quolls if the poultry industry was affected by bird flu.<\/p>\n
“We’re building up a little stockpile of chickens and rabbits and kangaroo meat and things like that so … we’ve got some food on hand to feed these critters while we’ve got them,” he said.<\/p>\n
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The wildlife team at Mulligans Flat sanctuary will begin putting quolls in quarantine if the risk of bird flu in the ACT continues to rise. (ABC News: Tobias Ostini)<\/p>\n
He said there were various trigger points that would see the quoll quarantine pens being filled with the endangered marsupials, but for now, it was a waiting game.<\/p>\n
“It [H5 bird flu] is not going to get here overnight \u2026 but we’ll keep an eye on the records,” Dr Cummings said.<\/p>\n
“If it gets into New South Wales or it gets to our coast, that’ll take us to the next level of preparedness and that’s when we might start thinking about going and bringing some in.<\/p>\n
“So it’s a process, watching and learning as it unfolds around the country, and then we’ll be looking to take action before it gets to us in Canberra.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A population of quolls is being protected by a sanctuary in Canberra, but the threat of the H5…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":762421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[2666,1313,64,63,9326,1845,17702,2667,2929,154440,8112,75,20748,144030,144031,41792,17974,2668,118723,363767,2270,48277,6018,256225,66800,128,29290,338],"class_list":["post-762420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-act","tag-animals","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-biosecurity","tag-bird-flu","tag-birds","tag-canberra","tag-conservation","tag-danger","tag-disease","tag-environment","tag-extinction","tag-fence","tag-fencing","tag-infection","tag-infectious-disease","tag-local-stories","tag-migratory","tag-mulligans-flat-sanctuary","tag-nature","tag-protected-species","tag-protection","tag-quoll","tag-quolls","tag-science","tag-vulnerable-species","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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