Australia has become the last continent to report its first cases of the H5N1 bird flu. The virus is spreading rapidly, and this summer’s expected extreme weather could, in the worst-case scenario, create a perfect storm leading to the mass death of thousands of birds and animals. – ‘The worst-case, catastrophic scenario would be the loss of entire species,’ says Darren Grover, biodiversity expert at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
Bird flu has been detected in fur seals and elephant seals on the subantarctic island of South Georgia in the South Atlantic, scientists confirm. It is a cloud of worry because the infectious disease has already killed millions of birds worldwide.
