Listen to Australian and world news and follow trending topics with .
Murray Sharp spent twenty years protecting a small colony of Little Penguins.
You’ll find him patrolling a secluded beach in Sydney, cleaning up rubbish and talking to the locals.
“What we are doing is everything we can to protect the current habitat and population. There is a lot of education out there.”
Little penguins are native to Australia and New Zealand.
They are found along the country’s southern border, with the largest colonies at Kangaroo Island and Phillip Island.
But in Sydney the population is in danger.
“Well, to start with we had a pretty healthy population of about 60 to 65 breeding pairs and now unfortunately we’re down to about 19 breeding pairs.”
Sharp says a single major event could completely wipe out the population.
“I think not only for me but for the community it would be very sad.”
This major event could occur as early as spring, via migratory birds, with virologists such as Associate Professor Kirsty Short warning that a deadly strain of bird flu could reach Australian shores.
“I think it’s something that represents a very real possibility and a very real threat to Australian biodiversity. So it’s something that we really need to plan for and prepare for the worst-case scenario.”
“Avian influenza is a subset of the influenza virus that we know because it causes flu every winter, but avian influenza refers to a subset of these viruses that circulate primarily in birds.”
And just as with COVID variants, the same thing is happening with avian flu strains.
The global epidemic is caused by the H-5-N-1 strain and Associate Professor Short says it is spreading very rapidly through birds.
“We’ve also seen an unusual number of spillovers of the infection in marine animals and now what we’re seeing for the first time is that in the United States this virus has spread to dairy cattle. So in many ways it’s not behaving like a typical virus avian influenza virus”.
Australia is the only continent free from this strain, likely due to its geographic isolation, but which also makes its wildlife vulnerable.
Without being exposed to many strains of the virus, they are unable to develop immunity.
Scientists have undertaken sensitivity testing on Australia’s native black swans and Associate Professor Short says the results are worrying.
“They found that black swans had basically 100% mortality… A lot of the data that we depend on in this field comes from the Northern Hemisphere and obviously doesn’t have the same species as us, so we’ve never really studied that, so it’s really a priority for further research.”
Australia has avoided this situation for a couple of years now, but advocates such as Jack Gough, of the Invasive Species Council, say preparedness efforts will need to be stepped up.
“Last year we were lucky, but luck is not the way we want to approach something when we’re talking about bird deaths, wildlife slaughter, on the scale potentially of the Black Summer bushfires.”
Abroad, in countries like Argentina, unprecedented numbers of elephant seals and sea lions have died.
Last year, the mortality rate of elephant seal calves on Argentina’s Valdes Peninsula reached 95%.
BirdLife Australia’s Urban Bird Program Manager Holly Parsons says Australia needs to use this information moving forward.
“We can learn from our international partners about what has happened elsewhere and adapt to Australia. We have time to prepare, but now is the time to act.”
“Overseas we have seen that collecting dead birds when this problem arises has reduced mortality rates by 15 to 80%. But that requires people on the ground to know, that people are prepared and that they have that response in place. act.”
It also calls on the Government to look at localized planning and vaccination options for native wildlife.
The Federal Government has established a dedicated taskforce to guide national preparedness planning and is conducting a national exercise to test Australia’s preparedness.
It has also invested nearly $7 million in bird flu preparedness, though Gough says that’s not enough.
“Let’s make it very clear that the $7 million was mostly just re-announcements of funding put in place and there is only $580,000 for preparedness for this deadly bird flu when it comes to our wildlife. It may not arrive this spring, but we know that if it were to emerge, Australia is not prepared at this time.”