{"id":604254,"date":"2026-09-18T11:56:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T11:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/604254\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T11:56:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T11:56:17","slug":"dead-petone-seal-tests-negative-for-bird-flu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/604254\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead Petone seal tests negative for bird flu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">A leopard seal found dead in the Hutt River died of natural causes and not bird flu, the Department of Conservation (DOC) says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Ranger biodiversity David Moss said bird flu testing came back negative, and the seal did not appear to be infected with any other disease.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">&#8220;The test results show the leopard seal was relatively old, and not infected with [high pathogenicity avian influenza] or any other obvious disease. From this, we can infer she died of natural causes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">A marine biologist <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rnz.co.nz\/news\/environment\/1366366\/harassment-may-have-contributed-to-leopard-seal-s-death-marine-biologist-says\" class=\"underline-brand-hover visited:text-foreground-secondary hover:visited:text-foreground-primary\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">previously told RNZ<\/a> the harassment may have contributed to its death, as the attention can drain the animal&#8217;s energy while they&#8217;re trying to rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A leopard seal found dead in the Hutt River died of natural causes and not bird flu, the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-604254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}