Surfbirds News: BirdLife International Archives
Africa, Europe and the Americas without the widely predicted outbreaks of H5N1 bird flu associated with their migration routes.
"The most obvious explanation is that migrating wild birds are not spreading the disease," said Dr Michael Rands, Director & Chief Executive of BirdLife International.
"Migratory wild birds were blamed for spreading bird flu west from Asia, yet there's been no spread back eastwards, nor to South Asia and Africa this Autumn. The limited outbreaks in eastern Europe are on southerly migration routes but are more likely to be caused by other vectors such as the import of poultry or poultry products. The hypothesis that wild birds are to blame is simply far from proven," said Dr Rands. "Wild birds occasionally come into contact with infected poultry and die: they are the victims not vectors of H5N1 bird flu."
Garganey from Surfbirds Galleries by Sue Tranter
BirdLife maintains that better biosecurity is the key to halting the spread of bird flu.
In particular, BirdLife is urging governments and relevant agencies to concentrate their efforts on the poultry and cage bird trades and to impose the following prevention measures:
* Banning the movement of poultry and poultry products from infected
areas
* Banning the use of untreated poultry faeces as fertiliser and feed in
fish-farms and in agriculture |
