Eckard Boot is ‘sick of it’, says the ranger on the site of Natuurmonumenten† The island where he works is normally a good, safe breeding ground for birds, especially the sandwich tern, but is currently a bird graveyard. There are rangers in white suits. Because of the risk of contamination, they wear mouth caps and gloves, they have garbage bags in their hands.
According to Natuurmonumenten, they must ‘clean up a carcass at every step’. “What is happening to us this year is very, very sad,” Boot says. “I believe we have cleared up to 3000 cadavers in total, and the end is not yet in sight.”
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The number of dead sandwich terns has increased rapidly. Last week told forester Jerome van Abbevé to EditieNL how he had found hundreds of dead sandwich terns in the Texel nature reserve De Petten.
Huge impact
Bird flu usually occurs mainly in winter. The fact that it now happens in the summer makes the work of the forest rangers extra difficult. For example, Abbevé said: “The birds have a resting place where they go if they are not feeling well. Most die there. We want to remove them to prevent spreading of course, but it is also breeding season, so we don’t want too many healthy ones. disturbing birds. That makes it complicated.”
The nature managers on Texel are also very concerned about the survival of the bird, because sandwich terns only breed at a later age and on average only raise one chick per year. That may be because they are getting old. ‘Now that a significant part of the adult birds are dying, and hardly any chicks are being raised this year, this has an enormous impact,’ can be read in the statement of Natuurmonumenten.
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Start this year camping Europe, and therefore also the Netherlands, already with cases of bird flu. Bird flu was diagnosed somewhere in Europe every few days in January. Wild birds are dying en masse, millions of chickens and turkeys have to be euthanized. Last April, bird flu diagnosed in Barneveld and tens of thousands of animals had to be culled. Thousands of birds have also been culled in Lunteren, especially chickens.
In the brain
The virus that is now circulating mainly multiplies in the brain. It is spread by migratory birds that winter in Europe. Because the virus is now circulating in wild birds, you have hardly any control over it, Thijs Kuiken, professor of comparative pathology at Erasmus University, previously told RTL Nieuws. “Birds twist their necks. They can no longer fly, often fall over and make circles walking or swimming.”
In the tweet below you see a bird with bird flu:
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Is this virus also dangerous for humans?
“It can be dangerous for people,” Thijs Kuiken, professor of comparative pathology at Erasmus University, previously told RTL Nieuws. “About sixty people have been infected with this variant of the virus, almost half of whom have died. That happened in China and Laos. In Europe, the risk is much lower because we do not have close contact with poultry.”
But the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has increased the risk assessment in Europe for people who come into contact with poultry in the course of their work, such as chicken farmers, from ‘low’ to ‘low-average’.
The advice of forester Jerome Abbevé: don’t come near, keep dogs on a leash. The virus can also transfer to dogs, and therefore also to humans.
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