Thousands of seabird carcasses washed up on the canadian coast
"Hello, I found a lot of dead birds in the Cape St. Mary's Reserve off the coast of Newfoundland in eastern Canada."
"Hello, thanks for the notification, now please stay away from those birds and wait for us to deal with it."
The above conversations took place countless times during the week, and Chris Moony, the interpreting officer at the Cape St Mary's Preserve, was so overwhelmed that he could do nothing about it but to record the numbers and retrieve the bird carcasses in time. In just one week, they recovered the carcasses of thousands of birds, and the variety was very diverse, including bighorn owls, bald eagles, grey herons, ducks and geese, and even crows.
Wildlife biologist Peter Thomas first suspected that it was related to the recent abnormal climate, the variables brought about by global warming have begun to sweep the world, and most of the strange phenomena are attributed to global warming, and there are almost no "unjust, false and wrong cases".
But this time it really doesn't seem to have anything to do with global warming, albeit only temporarily.
A clear cause of death
Since May 2022, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has confirmed 13 positive cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza in the Canadian province of Eastern Newfoundland. So biologists investigating large-scale bird deaths examined bird carcasses and determined that the cause of their deaths was avian influenza.
Avian influenza is no stranger to us, it is a respiratory pathogen that causes high mortality, it can infect almost all birds, posing a huge threat to the poultry industry, and what is more terrifying is that these diseases, despite the word "poultry", can also infect other animals, including us humans, so whenever a call is received, the operators of the Cape St. Mary's Sanctuary first let the finders stay away from bird carcasses.
By classifying bird carcasses, biologists have found that herring gulls, Icelandic gulls, universal crows, and American crows are the groups most affected by influenza, and it is not known why, perhaps related to their gregariousness.
How to handle it
The situation is clearly critical, and Wildlife Canada is working closely with the governments of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Wildlife Health Partnership Canada to help curb the spread of the disease. The disease has now spread to Vancouver Island.
Elizabeth Melnick of the Elizabeth Wildlife Centre in B.C. receives at least 10 calls a day reporting unusual bird deaths, addressing the imminent spread.
But there is no clear plan at present, and the first step can only be to inform people to stay away from various birds and pay attention to the situation of their own poultry.
What will happen next, we don't know. I can only sigh that in recent years, there have been many disasters and difficulties.