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<\/p>\nSouth Australian authorities are investigating a mass bird mortality event after more than 80 dead and sick birds were found off the state’s south-east coast.<\/p>\n
At this stage, the SA government said the birds were not being considered as “suspected cases” while they underwent testing for H5 bird flu in Adelaide.<\/p>\n
State aerial surveillance detected 49 dead and 35 sick greater crested terns on an island called Baudin Rocks, about five kilometres south of Cape Jaffa on Friday.<\/p>\n
SA Chief Veterinary Officer Skye Fruean said it would be “very unlikely” that testing of these birds would return negative results for the H5 strain.<\/p>\n
“We do need to wait for the lab testing, but given it is an island that has a large number of crested terns and a large number of sick and dead crested terns, we are of course expecting that we would get some bad news from that situation in the coming days,” Dr Fruean said.<\/p>\n
“A mass mortality event doesn’t have any particular defined number \u2026 mass mortality is essentially something that would be unusual and significant and I’d describe [these deaths] as that.<\/p>\n
“We’ve known that this is going to happen at some point in time, unfortunately it appears to be escalating quite rapidly.”<\/p>\n
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SA Chief Veterinary Officer Skye Fruean describes the bird deaths on Baudin Rocks a mass mortality event.<\/p>\n
\u00a0 (ABC News)<\/p>\n
Dr Fruean said the island was surveyed two weeks ago when there was no evidence of sick or dead birds but “that situation has changed”.<\/p>\n
She said the aerial surveillance team had collected a small sample for testing but had not euthanised any birds on the island.<\/p>\n
SA Environment Minister Emily Bourke said the mass mortality event “would provide a significant change in our response and our understanding on the impact on wildlife here in South Australia”.<\/p>\n
“What we are seeing now, this week particularly, is there has been a change in those numbers going from migratory to localised spread and now potentially into large numbers around our coastline,” she said.<\/p>\n
Suspected cases rise<\/p>\n
CSIRO testing has confirmed 20 previously suspected cases of H5 bird flu in SA, including one seagull at Robe, the first confirmed detection in the species in Australia.<\/p>\n
There are now 53 confirmed cases in Australia, 39 of which are in South Australia.<\/p>\n
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Australia has a confirmed case of H5 bird flu in a silver gull, or the seagull. (Bernard Spragg, Wikimedia Commons\/CC0 1.0)<\/p>\n
A further six suspected cases have been detected, including three in seagulls and one in a greater crested tern from Monarto.<\/p>\n
Dr Fruean said while the Monarto case “was further inland” than other detections, the Monarto Safari Park nearby had “biosecurity protocols” in place to protect vulnerable species.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Zoos SA chief executive Phil Ainsley said the Monarto detection was outside the safari park and it “doesn’t change our response”.<\/p>\n
“We’ve been preparing for the potential arrival of H5 avian influenza for several years, and the precautionary biosecurity measures we’ve already implemented continue to do exactly what they were designed to do,” he said.<\/p>\n
What we know about bird flu <\/a><\/p>\n Birds infected with a deadly type of bird flu have been found all around the country. Where else could birds carrying the virus land?<\/p>\n Victoria also detected six more suspected H5 cases in the south-west<\/a> of the state, which would now undergo further testing at CSIRO’s Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness.<\/p>\n