Dr. Ted Leighton visited Bear Island near Digby, NS, in mid-August, and knew something was wrong when he saw a pair of seagulls behaving strangely. “They were behaving in a way that suggests some kind of neurological disorder,” said Leighton, a retired veterinarian and wildlife health researcher. He also noticed something else. “I saw that there was a lot of clearing going on. You could see a seagull or two pecking at something dead on the beach, over and over again along the straight coastline as I saw it. So I thought there was a significant mortality going on.” Leighton, an internationally renowned wildlife disease scientist, had no opportunity to investigate further that day, but when he returned to Bear Island on September 3, his suspicions were confirmed. “There were skeletal remains everywhere,” he said. “Often it was just wings and breastbone, no meat, sometimes wings.” Dr. Ted Leighton is a retired veterinary pathologist who discovered the gull dying on Bear Island, NS (Submitted by Dr. Ted Leighton) Leighton said it’s impossible to know how many seagulls have died on the island recently because tides wash carcasses into the Annapolis Basin twice a day, but he said the number is definitely in the hundreds. Leighton believes highly pathogenic avian influenza is the cause of the extinction. “It’s highly unlikely that it’s anything else, but of course you have to do the exact work of testing for the virus to be sure.” Bear Island is accessible by foot at low tide and is an occasional destination for hikers and climbers. The town of Digby recently asked people to stay off the island.

An unprecedented year

Leighton collected some samples from the island, which will be sent to the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative (CWHC) for research. The cooperative, which Leighton co-founded and then led for many years, provides disease surveillance and wildlife mortality monitoring across Canada. Dr. Megan Jones, CWHC Atlantic Regional Director and assistant professor in the pathology and microbiology department at Atlantic Veterinary College, said it has been an unprecedented year for bird flu in the Atlantic provinces and across the continent. He said the co-op’s Atlantic office typically does about 300 diagnostic tests on wildlife in the first six months of the year, but this year staff did 1,400 tests during that time. The agency has faced such high demand that it now has to prioritize some cases as it has already spent its entire diagnostic budget for the year. Most of the dead seagulls had already been captured when Leighton found them. (Submitted by Dr. Ted Leighton) From January to March, about nine percent of tests were positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza, and between April and June, that number had risen to about 20 percent. “It’s a challenge because there’s not much we can do,” Jones said. “Will gather. There’s no social distancing, so there’s not much we can do about it other than monitoring and trying to minimize transmission.” Glenn Parsons, manager of the sustainable wildlife use program at Nova Scotia’s Department of Natural Resources and Renewable Resources, said the county has received reports of dead birds in every county and has seen cases of highly pathogenic avian flu from Yarmouth to Sydney. . Parsons said the virus is spread through direct contact, including droppings and fluids, so people are advised not to touch or approach sick or dead birds and not to feed them. Anyone in Nova Scotia who finds a sick or dead bird or animal should call Natural Resources at 1-800-565-2224.

follow H5N1

The North American outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza, a strain of H5N1, began in Newfoundland last December with the discovery of the virus on an exhibition farm. A case subsequently appeared in a Canada goose in Nova Scotia, and then in other birds in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. In the intervening months, the virus has spread across the continent, having swept through Europe last year. It has caused significant mortality in wild bird populations and has been found in foxes in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, as well as seals in Quebec. In other parts of Canada and the U.S., it has been found in skunks, raccoons and bobcats, Jones said. When a seagull dies, other seagulls pick up the carcass and eat it, spreading bird flu. (Submitted by Dr. Ted Leighton) This particular H5N1 strain has not caused significant illness in humans, but public health officials are closely monitoring all cases, as transmission to humans could trigger a global outbreak. CWHC sends samples of all positive wildlife cases to the National Center for Foreign Animal Diseases lab in Winnipeg, which is conducting genetic sequencing of the virus to try to pick up any mutations that make it more likely to infect humans. source link

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