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Brown jaegers and southern polar jaegers, two gull-like species that nest in Antarctica, are known as the “pirates of the South Seas. ” These migratory seabirds are fierce, competitive predators that hunt or retrieve everything from eggs and adult birds to shellfish and mammals. or garbage.
“They are difficult animals and they are dying,” says Antonio Quesada, director of the Spanish Polar Committee.
He earnestly tells why this season’s fieldwork in Antarctica has been like no other: A deadly strain of bird flu, H5N1, raped this fragile ecosystem in February. Only a handful of specially trained investigators were able to access the outbreak sites, dressed in hazmat guards. It serves to save you contagion and spread.
The true scale of the event is still unknown, but reports are grim. In the Falkland Islands, H5N1 killed 10,000 black-browed albatrosses and devastated a colony of gentoo penguins. Scientists have discovered a large mortality of skuas: 50 carcasses covered a nesting colony of 130 Americans on Beak Island.
Quesada has rarely seen a single dead skua in 20 years’ work in Antarctica. “They’re an indicator species. If they’re dying, what does it mean for other birds?” he asks.
The risk posed by H5N1 extends far beyond the frozen South. Few people realize that the world is ultimately under the clutches of a severe pandemic or, to be more precise, a panzootic one, the animal equivalent. This virus has already inflamed more than 500 species of birds and mammals.
Since its appearance in 2020 in Europe, this strain of “highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI)” has caused deaths around the planet, the largest epidemic in history. The virus is deadly and exceptionally transmissible, jumping among birds, mammals and livestock with terrifying agility.
Experts say the risk to humans is increasing. Many countries are strengthening surveillance and producing or purchasing vaccines. Cases are multiplying in the United States: four more people contracted the virus from cows and another ten from chickens.
Meanwhile, it continues to devastate wildlife, many endangered animals, says Chris Walzer, executive director of fitness at the nonprofit Wildlife Conservation Society. By March, H5N1 had crossed the species barrier to infect some 485 species of birds and at least 48 species of mammals, according to United Nations estimates. Many of those species had never been diagnosed with bird flu before.
The disease has infiltrated even the most remote regions of six continents. When a polar bear succumbed in Alaska in 2023, it was the first mammal death detected from bird flu in the Arctic. So far, only Australia and the Pacific islands have been spared. The virus is still on the move, spreading to new hosts as it evolves and selects genes from other strains of bird flu.
Victims died in staggering numbers, especially animals that gather in giant teams like pinnipeds. The virus has spread across the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America, killing more than 30,000 sea lions in 2022-2023. He then killed about 17,000 southern elephant calves. seals in the Valdés Peninsula of Argentina: the mortality never recorded for the species.
H5N1 was transmitted around the world by migratory birds. But new studies show that this existing strain (called clade 2. 3. 4. 4b) can now spread directly among mammals, with terrifying implications. It appears that “H5N1 viruses are evolving more flexibly and adapting to mammals in new ways,” the study authors write, which “could have global consequences for wildlife, humans, and/or livestock. “
Walzer warns: “H5N1 now poses an existential risk to biodiversity. “
It’s about perceiving that this panzootic disease “is a man-made problem,” says Vincent Munster, director of the Virus Ecology Section at the United States National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Avian influenza is unusual in wild birds, especially in their herbaceous hosts: ducks, geese, gulls, terns, swans, and other waterfowl. They bring a non-pathogenic form, a benign virus that can be asymptomatic. It spreads seasonally, when several species congregate in preparation sites or organization in combination to nest.
But when bird flu is transmitted to poultry, it can become a highly contagious and deadly virus.
Existing panzootics began when this H5N1 strain moved from domestic birds to wild birds, which occurred due to fashionable breeding methods. Humans have further facilitated the consequences by destroying wetlands, which gather migratory birds into small patches of habitat near poultry farms.
When farms encroach on wetlands, it creates a better interface for these types of viruses, Walzer says. It is a real petri dish that allows avian flu to exchange genes and mutate into potentially more virulent or transmissible strains. This environment allowed the virus to infect chickens, ducks, and ducks — and return to the wild in virulent form.
“The emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza is a direct consequence of large-scale poultry farming,” says Munster. According to estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, there are more than 34 billion chickens on Earth.
The Delmarva Peninsula in the United States offers a perfect example of the overlap between agricultural operations and wetlands. It is a migratory or wintering stopover site along the North American Flyway on the country’s mid-Atlantic coast. It’s also the result of a $4. 4 billion poultry industry that raised six hundred million chickens in 2023. H5N1 struck there and around the world. In Cambodia, for example, farmers who raise ducks and ducks in wetlands have also faced outbreaks.
The virus is now spreading among cows, infecting at least 171 herds in thirteen United States. It grows in udder cells and H5N1 RNA has been discovered in milk.
Another main fear is that the H5N1 virus would not disappear between spring and fall migrations, as avian influenza does. It is now endemic in Europe and North America. When that happened, Walzer says, “people started worrying that it wouldn’t happen. “far away. “
For 4 consecutive years, wild birds have been carriers, hosts, reservoirs and victims of the virus.
H5N1 is not new. In 1996, a goose from China’s Guangdong province may have been “patient zero” of the existing strain, which spread within the flock and was transmitted to wild birds. The virus then developed into a severe respiratory illness that inflamed 18 other people and killed six in Hong Kong. This outbreak ended after 1. 5 million chickens were culled.
Then came a “viral talk” phase. Viruses don’t just cross barriers between species. As they evolve, they make periodic forays into other species over the years. In most cases, those attempts fail. Unless a virus can enter cells and replicate, it circulates harmlessly.
Influenza viruses mutate as they get genes from other viruses: mixing, pairing, reassorting and adapting, says Colin Ross Parrish, a virologist at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. Each genetic mutation creates a new building block of evolution: the genetic sequences are cellular. Instructions. They help a virus evade immunity in a host, discover how it causes infection, how it spreads, and much more.
The eight-section genome of bird flu offers many opportunities to revamp your genetics, much like a Las Vegas slot machine, and in 2003 it hit a viral jackpot. Avian flu mutated from poultry to wild birds, triggering existing panzootics.
Fast forward to 2020, when H5N1 appeared in its current form in European birds and then effectively infiltrated new species, adding mammals. It temporarily spread across Africa and the Middle East as it traveled long distances along migratory routes. Humans helped by promoting and shipping inflamed poultry across national borders.
The virus crossed the Atlantic and reached the coasts of the United States and Canada in late 2021. Soon, mallards and swans were dying in the American Midwest, bald eagles were dying across the country, seals were dying in Maine , like bobcats in Wisconsin and raccoons in Washington and Michigan, so to speak, are just a few of the many losses.
The virus then aggressively invaded South America, birds and marine mammals. Genetic studies of dead seabirds, a dead dolphin and a dead sea lion in Peru have shed light on the movements and adaptations of H5N1. The researchers discovered that in the United States, the Eurasian strain added genes; In this way, it expanded its repertoire of hosts and swept through giant colonies of seals and sea lions like wildfire.
H5N1 reached both poles. Epidemics continue to occur almost everywhere.
Proximity is a vital factor in how viruses spread, as the world has learned with the COVID pandemic. Sharing a home or gathering in large groups poses a big threat from H5N1, says Amandine Gamble, an infectious disease ecology expert at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. To sense where birds pass and how they spread H5N1, she is collecting genetic material from various species in the Falkland Islands and equipping them with tracking devices to track their movements.
Regardless of its location, the virus triggers a systemic infection in birds. They may be lethargic, sneeze, cough, have difficulty breathing, or have intestinal problems. The virus also invades the brain. Sick birds would possibly become disoriented, lose coordination, stumble, swim or walk in circles, tremble or shake their necks before dropping dead. Some die suddenly without any symptoms of illness appearing. Survivors can spread the virus to others.
Mammals have many of the same symptoms as birds, but necropsies have also revealed pneumonia and hemorrhages in the heart, liver and other organs. Autopsies of 55 mammals showed that the most affected brain component was the frontal lobe, which explains the motor and cognitive symptoms.
The genie is out of the bottle, Waltzer said. He stresses that the duration of the epidemic and the number of viruses present in the environment are unprecedented. “The undeniable global distribution of this virus,” he notes, “is underestimated, as is the scale of the ecosystems affected. “
Researchers are deeply involved in the effects of this red alert virus: “The highly pathogenic H5N1 poses a genuine and tangible risk to wildlife, on a scale never seen before,” says Marcela Uhart, who directs the University’s Latin American program. of the One Health Institute of California Davis.
On an updated United Nations scenario map, areas of the world appear untouched, but that’s probably because some regions have little or no bird flu surveillance, Walzer says. For example, experts suspect that there is significant under-reporting in Africa. Many countries have limited resources, so pathogen hunters target the deadliest human threat: malaria. Ebola, Lassa fever and other infectious diseases.
Many pathogens, including avian influenza, are zoonotic: they move between wildlife, livestock and humans. In recent decades, zoonotic diseases have emerged and spread at an accelerated rate. They are fatal and incurable.
As humanity encroaches on wilderness areas, humans, livestock, and wildlife are placed in unnatural proximity, exposing them all to germs to which they have no immunity – such as bird flu – and leaving wildlife with increasingly limited habitat. With the illegal wildlife trade, bushmeat hunting, and a changing climate, it’s no wonder that many species are seriously threatened with extinction.
H5N1 is the latest latest threat. ” The number of other species affected is large,” says Emily Denstedt, a fitness program advisor for the Wildlife Conservation Society.
Wild birds are among the most affected animals. This is a fundamental change: previous H5N1 strains mainly attacked poultry. At least 485 species of birds from 25 classifications have been infected, in addition to puffins, pelicans, peregrine falcons, owls, toucans, parrots, bald eagles, warblers, finches, and many more.
However, seabirds are by far the most affected. The events of the H5N1 “superspreader” in the United Kingdom offer sobering examples of the carnage caused by this virus, although there is no way to count, as it should be, the victims.
Nesting colonies are now especially empty in many places. In Scotland, home to 60% of the world’s wonderful skuas, the number of breeding birds has fallen by three quarters since 2021. Some 16,000 gannets have died and the population in Wales has fallen to a precarious level. degrees that have not been noticed since the 1960s. Rangers have discovered more than 660 dead Arctic tern chicks in England.
In spring 2022, thousands of birds died in Africa, along the eastern Atlantic flyway in Senegal and Gambia. That same year, South Africa lost at least 28 African penguins, a tragedy for those endangered birds.
In the United States, the virus attacked Caspian terns in Lake Michigan, killing 62% of them. In early 2023, pelicans covered Peruvian beaches; More than 40% of the population died. At least 20 California condors, a critically endangered species, have died in Arizona, jeopardizing its perilous recovery from just 22 birds in 1987.
So far, seals and sea lions are the only mammals dying en masse. However, the number of mammals affected is worrying: from brown bears, lions, pikas, pumas, cows and dolphins to domestic dogs and cats, raccoons, foxes, sea otters and zoo tigers. In 2023, six dead walruses were found in Svalbard, about 965 kilometers (600 miles) from the Arctic Circle.
Uhart explains the broader collateral damage: All species play a role in maintaining healthy ecosystems, and significant losses extend to the entire community. She provides the example of pinnipeds. As top predators, seals, sea lions and walruses prey on species. Without them, previously restricted species multiply, can expand their diversity and displace other animals.
“In the past we’ve almost wiped out pinnipeds, hunting them for their fur and blubber, and they’re only now recovering after years of protection,” Hartr says. “We cannot allow a disease to put them in danger again. “
Possibly there would be other, less apparent effects on wildlife. Birds that are in poor health would likely not take flight, Munster says, and birds that breed in giant colonies likely would not thrive in smaller groups. Walzer points out that we humans and our surveillance systems are very bad at detecting those more sophisticated population declines: “And all of a sudden, they were gone. “
The ultimate scale of this global animal apocalypse will depend on the vigor, staying power and adaptability of H5N1, and especially how exactly it adapts.
It all depends on how species interact. ” Lifestyle influences the dynamics of [H5N1] spread in animal populations,” Cornell’s Gamble says. In small spaces, it passes among birds, but not all of them spread a terrible disease. They may simply become “silent spreaders. “
Another thing is how and where the animals are exposed. H5N1 is a resistant organism: it replicates in the respiratory tract of mammals and birds, as well as in the intestines of birds. Animals can clear the virus from inflamed cells after just six hours.
It is resistant and still contagious in water. One study found that H5N1 survived in bird droppings for about a day in extreme heat (42° Celsius, 107° Fahrenheit), five days in mild temperatures (24°C, 75°F), and up to two months without blood (4°C, 39°F). The resistance of this strain is still unknown.
Carnivores and scavengers can contract the virus by eating an inflamed bird carcass. But researchers also showed that mammals now transmit the virus to each other, in the wild, on farms and in zoos. It spread on a mink farm in Spain (where tens of thousands of people lived in about 30 barns), among dairy cows in the United States, among tigers in a Chinese zoo and among pinnipeds in Argentina. Scientists have concluded that the strain that killed elephant seals also infected terns, which can spread everywhere.
Quesada is deeply involved with the upcoming breeding season in Antarctica. Confirmation of the virus in elephant seals “puts us even more on alert,” he said.
The threat to humans increases as the virus accumulates an ever-growing list of mammalian hosts. This year, fourteen other people have been diagnosed in the United States; all worked with farm animals or chickens. So far, there is no evidence that the virus can be transmitted directly between humans. However, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned public health officials to prepare for an imaginable spillover. Alertness will increase if H5N1 is airborne, if it can be sneezed and transported through aerosols or respiratory droplets, Hartr says.
One key remains: As Americans expand their immunity, will the virus disappear? And, if so, when?
The prognosis is not good. In places where H5N1 has already invaded, Uhart says, “some species will take years, if not decades, or even longer, to recover. “it will probably remain, it will continue to adapt. . . and will evolve into new strains. “She expects recurring fatal waves and “for some species that are threatened lately, a single outbreak may simply mean extinction. “
Munster compares this panzootic to the SARS pandemic: in wildlife, “without preventive, curative or prophylactic countermeasures, such as social distancing, masking, vaccines and antivirals. “
One strategy, vaccinating poultry against avian flu, could simply prevent or restrict the current evolution of the H5N1 virus, Walzer says.
For decades, experts have been waving a red flag, trying to promote a “One Health” strategy to avoid long-term pandemics. It is a holistic technique that considers the fitness of humans, wildlife, livestock and ecosystems. Above all, integrate the threat of disease into decision making. The One Health technique shifts the obligation to the government to save diseases before they jump from one species to another, instead of the existing style: reacting when a crisis arises. Studies show this is the most effective and cost-effective pandemic response strategy.
In December 2021, amid a large human mortality from COVID, the WHO and advocates from 194 countries agreed to negotiate a treaty on the pandemic, but countries have yet to reach an agreement, as the May deadline to submit the document to the 77th World Health Conference is missing. A recent editorial stated that negotiators are “far from adopting a text that will spare them the pathogenic consequences of wildlife. “
With large factory farms located along migratory routes, “we may have noticed the arrival [of this panzootic], but unfortunately our ability to interfere legislatively and politically is not there,” Munster says. “And. . . [wildlife] will definitely pay the price. “
Meanwhile, viral, invisible, and incessant discussions between domestic and wild species are on the rise.
Banner image: More than 95% of domestic southern elephant seal dogs (Mirounga leonina) born in 2023 died that year due to the deadly bird flu outbreak. Image © Antonio Alcami, UC Davis.
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