{"id":338960,"date":"2025-12-09T12:55:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T12:55:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/338960\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T12:55:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T12:55:18","slug":"seventy-two-vultures-dead-at-ohio-school-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/338960\/","title":{"rendered":"Seventy-two vultures dead at Ohio school | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Click here for updates on this story<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0PIERCE TOWNSHIP, Ohio (WCPO<\/a>) — Ohio wildlife officials cleaned up the carcasses of 72 black vultures on Friday morning, which were splayed across the ballfields and campus of a Clermont County elementary school.<\/p>\n

Pierce Township officials said the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) initially refused to clean up or test the dead birds and only agreed to help hours after being contacted by the WCPO 9 I-Team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were very adamant that they were not coming. There was a recommendation that you just take them, put them in a bag, double-bag them and throw them in the garbage,\u201d said Pierce Township Trustee Allen Freeman. \u201cIt was very clear that there was no help coming \u2026 Thanks to Channel 9, you guys reached out to ODNR, and amazingly, they started to change their tune.\u201d<\/p>\n

Staff and teachers at St. Bernadette\u2019s School on Locust Lake Road returned from Thanksgiving break on Dec. 1 and found dead vultures spread across a campus where more than 200 children are enrolled.<\/p>\n

The school contacted Pierce Township Fire Chief Craig Wright for help, who said he reached out to ODNR for guidance.<\/p>\n

\u201c(ODNR wasn’t) overly concerned with the situation. They really had no intention to come out and do anything for the problem,\u201d Wright said. \u201cIt did upset me. I was a little surprised. It\u2019s a wildlife issue. There’s no better agency than them to deal with a wildlife issue.”<\/p>\n

Over the next few days, Wright said he contacted local public health and emergency management agencies for help to come up with a contingency plan, while the dead birds remained at the school.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a big undertaking to clean up this many dead animals when you really don\u2019t know or have the education or expertise to deal with that issue,\u201d Wright said.<\/p>\n

An ODNR spokesperson said the agency does not typically collect dead wildlife, but decided to help \u201cfor this unique circumstance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) has conducted testing of other dead wild birds in Clermont County, and we have been advised that those other birds are \u2018presumed positive\u2019 for HPAI (Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza) \u2026 once a presumed positive case is identified in a county, all additional dead birds found in groups of six or more are also presumed to be HPAI and are treated as such. Therefore, the vultures in this case are presumed to be positive for HPAI, however, ODNR is working to collect additional samples to send for testing due to this unique circumstance,\u201d according to a statement from ODNR.<\/p>\n

Freeman said he wants to know for certain if the vultures died from bird flu or were poisoned.<\/p>\n

Freeman and Wright both said that ODNR declined to test the birds. A spokesperson for Clermont County Public Health confirmed the claim.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs is protocol in situations involving wildlife, the issue was originally reported to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which declined to test the birds,\u201d according to a statement from public health spokesperson Krista Rose.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, given the potential risk to public health, we worked with our state partners to arrange testing. \u2026 On Friday, Dec. 5, two birds are being delivered to a state animal laboratory for testing. We expect results back early next week,\u201d Rose said.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, dozens of seemingly healthy black vultures flew around the school on Friday morning. They perched in trees and on the baseball field fence near the carcasses.<\/p>\n

Freeman said he worries about more bird deaths.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou also have a lot of geese that are in this area as well. So, all of those are flock animals, and they can be spreading this to countless areas inside Clermont County \u2026 and we would have no idea,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cThere are a number of people very close by that have cattle operations, and it has been known that bird flu can jump to cattle \u2026 it starts to open up an entirely new avenue that deals with our food and our food supply.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Wright urged residents not to panic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know why the birds have died. There’s an assumption that it could be a bird flu, but they\u2019ve not been tested to confirm that,\u201d Wright said. \u201cI\u2019ve been assured by health officials that it\u2019s a really low risk of transmission to humans.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the testing comes back positive for bird flu, the current risk to the public is very low, Rose said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTransmission occurs through contact with respiratory droplets and bodily fluids from live birds. Transmission of bird flu in wildlife can increase in the spring and fall with bird migration. The current strain of H5N1 has been found in the wild and domestic bird populations since 2022 throughout the country, including Ohio,\u201d Rose said.<\/p>\n

Pierce Township residents who find dead birds are urged to contact the township fire department or the Ohio Department of Natural Resources at (800) 945-3543<\/a> or wildinfo@dnr.ohio.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting.<\/p>\n

\u200bCOPYRIGHT 2025 BY CHANNEL 3000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Click here for updates on this story \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0PIERCE TOWNSHIP, Ohio (WCPO) — Ohio wildlife officials cleaned up the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[97,23576,3,41170,452],"class_list":["post-338960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-national-and-world-news","tag-news","tag-shareable-stories","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}