BTO scientists call for urgent investment in long-term monitoring and improved approaches to disease response, as avian influenza decimates a suite of bird species

BTO scientists call for urgent investment in long-term monitoring and improved approaches to disease response, as avian influenza decimates a suite of bird species - British Trust for Ornithology (BTO)

A devastating wave of high pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI / bird flu) has triggered an unprecedented global wildlife emergency, decimating seabird and waterbird colonies across the UK and beyond. A major new collection of studies, published by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) in its journal Bird Study, paints a stark picture of the virus’s global rampage and calls for immediate action to prevent further ecological disaster.

A dead Black-headed Gull lies on the ground, the sea is in the background. — Dead Black-headed Gull, a victim of HPAI by Dawn Balmer

Over the past three years, avian influenza has emerged as a rapidly escalating threat to wild bird populations around the world. Here in the UK, we have witnessed significant levels of mortality in our internationally important breeding seabirds and wintering waterfowl, as well as impacts on vulnerable bird of prey populations.

The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), working with its publishing partner Taylor & Francis, has brought together a suite of scientific studies across two issues of its scientific journal Bird Study – that both document the spread and impact of the disease on wild birds and assess the effectiveness of management responses. By doing this, BTO hopes that lessons learned from the recent outbreak will ensure that we are better prepared for future outbreaks of this, and other, diseases.

Collectively, the studies reveal the unprecedented scale and spread of avian influenza, as it decimated seabird colonies in the UK and Europe, before travelling across multiple pathways through Africa, North and South America, to eventually reach South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in the South Atlantic in September 2023.

Originating on a goose farm in China in 1996, the HPAI virus has caused global economic damage to poultry flocks, and high levels of mortality in wild birds, especially migratory wildfowl. It is now endemic in wild birds, making them both the unwitting victims of a disease that evolved from the farming industry as well as global virus vectors.